Paper
Saturday, July 24, 2004
The Development of the Manifestation of Children's Emotions Scale
Li Ho Cheung William, RN, Mphil, The Nethersole School of Nursing, The Nethersole School of Nursing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
| Learning Objective #1: Understand the importance and the purposes of developing a new objective behaviour assessment tool to measure the manifestation of children's emotions during medical procedures |
| Learning Objective #2: Understand the use of the newly developed behaviour assessment tool to document the manifestation of children's emotions during medical procedures |
Background: The assessment of how children's emotions are manifested prior to undergoing surgery must be addressed before any intervention can be appropriately planned and evaluated. There is a lack of such assessment tool with good psychometric properties in the existing literature. Objectives: The objectives of this study are twofold. First it seeks to develop an objective and operationalized behavioural observation scale that can be used to measure emotional distress in pediatric patients undergoing stressful medical procedures. Second, it aims to test the psychometric properties of the newly developed Manifestation of Children's Emotions Scale Design: A cross-sectional study was employed. A convenience sample of 82 children admitted for day surgery was recruited in this study. Methods: Based on extensive literature search, a number of observable negative emotional behaviours with different levels or intensities were identified. A panel of experts was set up to review this literature and develop the scale. Reliability of the scale was confirmed by inter-rater reliability and internal consistency reliability. The validity of the scale was confirmed by content validity and construct validity. Results: Results showed that there were adequate inter-rater reliability, internal consistency reliability, high content validity and excellent construct validity. Conclusions: This study has plugged a gap in the literature by developing an objective tool to document children’s emotional responses during medical procedure, which are under researched in the literature. Implications: The Manifestation of Children's Emotions Scale was developed to provide a simple, objective, and consistent method for nurses to document children’s emotional behaviour during medical procedures. Clinical nurses can also use the scale to evaluate pre-operative interventions directed toward minimizing anxiety and bolstering coping mechanisms in children undergoing surgery.
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