Comparing the Persian version properties of Behavioral Pain Scale and Critical Care Pain Observation Tool in patients with head trauma

The assessment of pain in critically ill patients requires careful examination, especially in intubated and traumatic head patients due to the impossibility of using verbal pain scales and changes in non-verbal communication due to the type of injury sustained .The purpose of this study was to compare the psychometric properties of the Persian version of Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS) and Critical-Care Pain Observation Tool (CPOT) in patients with head trauma.

The psychometrics (research methodology) was done on 60 intubated head trauma patients in Shahid Rahnemoon Hospital in Yazd (Iran) in 2018-19. Considerably, the pain was measured using two BPS and CPOT scales by two evaluators independently and simultaneously in both painful and non-painful procedures. Then, convergent validity, differential validity, evaluator reliability, stability, internal consistency, sensitivity and feasibility of the two tools were evaluated and compared.

Based on 2160 evaluations; in convergent validity strong correlation was observed between the two tools, (r>0.7). Differential validity, BPS and CPOT scores during painful procedures were significantly higher than painless procedures. The Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient for the two scales was 0.722 and 0.865, respectively. The reliability of the stability of both instruments in all evaluations was more than 0.7 and significant. Also sensitivity and feasibility were confirmed for BPS tools 0.8 and 75% and CPOT tools 0.7 and 55%.

The use of BPS and CPOT tools to measure pain in intubated head trauma patients are associated with validity, reliability, and sensitivity. However, BPS was feasible for nurses to use.