Validation of the staff attitudes to nutritional nursing care geriatric scale in Italian

摘要

Aim: To validate the Staff Attitudes to Nutritional Nursing Care Geriatric scale in Italian, a tool created in Sweden to measure nurses' attitudes towards nutritional care in older people. Background: Malnutrition in institutionalized older people is a serious problem having negative impact on patient outcomes. It is reported in the literature that nurses have negative attitudes towards nutritional care. Methods: Forward and back-translation were carried out to build the Italian version of the tool. Content and face validity were then examined by pilot study. Test-retest reliability with Spearman's rho (rs) correlation, intraclass correlation (ICC) and internal consistency reliability with Cronbach's α were assessed. Differences between test-rest were assessed by t-test. Results: Linguistic and semantic adaptation of the tool into Italian was successful. Thirty-three nurses skilled in caring for older patients did pilot testing and 46 test-retesting. SANN-G GITA-scale achieved good content and face validity, good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's α=0.85) and acceptable stability [rs=0.75, P=0.001; ICC=0.76, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.63-0.86; P=0.001]. The t-test showed no significant difference between test and retest results, confirming stability of the tool (t(64)=-0.98; P=0.33). Discussion: The process of adaptation of the scale from Swedish to Italian language was successful. Thus, the SANN-GITA scale can be useful to assess attitudes of nursing staff to nutritional care in the Italian context. Conclusions: This tool will allow the identification of areas where Italian nurses have negative attitudes and where to implement strategies to improve overall nutritional care.