Development of a Scale to Evaluate Depressive States among Elderly Patients in General Wards —Verification of the Contents to Improve the Accuracy of the Scale

摘要

Purpose: This study aims to verify the validity of the contents of the Nurse Administered Depression Scale for Elderly Inpatients16 (NDE16) using the Delphi approach in order to further improve the accuracy of the NDE16, a scale for rating potential depressive states in elderly inpatients through the observations reported by nurses. Methods: Participants were nurses working in general wards for longer than 3 years and who expressed consent to the study participation. Data were collected using the Delphi method (3 times). Responses are scored from 1 to 5 (3 - 5 points as positive) using the Likert method. The standard criteria for inclusion in the further evaluation are “mean ≥ 3.0”, “standard deviation < 1.0”, “median ≥ 3.0”, and “IQR ≤ 1.0”. Items that meet all the criteria at the third survey are employed as question items in the final questionnaire. Results: The respondents were 139 females, 10 males, and 1 unknown, aged 25 to 65. The collection rates of the three surveys were 75% to 82%. Based on the results of the first survey, wordings of 9 questions were modified. Since Question 13 “Queries are not really responded to.” did not meet the criteria (IQR = 2) at the third survey, we excluded this question and named the revised scale NDE15. Discussion: The reason why Question 13 did not meet the criteria could be due to the difficulty in distinguishing “Expressing thought suppression” from the state of cognitive decline in dementia. Further studies are needed to determine cutoff points.