Development and validation of a comprehensive tool for assessing emergency medical dispatch centres' organizational structure regarding pre-arrival instructions
Accepted: 20 January 2024
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Introduction: pre-arrival instructions provided by emergency medical dispatch personnel have the potential to reduce outof- hospital cardiac arrest mortality and improve various outcomes. Despite international guidelines and existing regulations endorsing these interventions, tools for detecting and monitoring the organizational structure of emergency medical dispatch centres concerning pre-arrival instructions are currently unavailable.
Materials and Methods: a validation study of a questionnaire was conducted in three phases: i) identification of domains and specific questions, ii) content validation, and iii) face validation, involving expert nurses.
Results: the initial instrument, consisting of 30 questions across six domains, was modified based on experts’ feedback, resulting in a final set of 38 questions. The content validity of individual questions (I-CVI) ranged from 0.83 to 1, and the overall questionnaire validity (S-CVI) was 0.96. Face validation of the questions in the final version of the questionnaire yielded an average score of 3.71 (±0.53) on a scale from 1 to 4.
Conclusions: this validation study has led to the development of a comprehensive instrument, relevant in content and clear in form. The authors believe it could provide valuable informational support for implementing improvement projects and standardizing the delivery of pre-arrival instructions by emergency medical dispatch centres, not only for cardiac arrest victims, following Law 116/2021.
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