Semantic Translation in French and Implementation of Nursing Activities Score in Belgium

Introduction: The evaluation of nursing time is a common practice in intensive care. It makes it possible to calculate an optimal nurse/patient ratio (N/P), which is a major challenge to ensure the quality of care and to control the costs of health care. The Nursing Activities Score (NAS) calculates this ratio but the tool has never been translated to French and adapted to Belgium. Objective: Translate and adapt the NAS to French-speaking Belgium. Methods: The scale was translated by two freelance translators from English to French. Then a retrograde translation from French to English was made. Cultural adaptation was carried out by bringing together a group of thirteen Belgian nurses. Finally, the translated scale was validated and implemented in two distinct intensive care units (ICU) in French-speaking Belgium. Results: The retrograde translation was similar to the first translation. The meeting with the expert group made it possible to reach a consensus on the scale adaptation and tutorial adapted to the context of care in Belgium. For validation, the NAS was encoded in 113 patients and with 981 NAS encoded in two ICUs, the median NAS/patient was respectively 69% and 76%. The median encoding time of the NAS was 3 minutes per patient. We observed a high compliance of the NAS encoding (respectively 99% and 76%). Conclusions: We have a validated scale, translated to French, a replica of the original version, and adapted it to the context of care in Belgium.