Development and Validation of a Nausea Assessment Tool

Nausea is a common symptom presented in healthcare which can have a profound impact on quality of life, nutrition, therapeutic response, and compliance of treatment. However, there are no existing nausea assessment tools validated for adults specifically developed for the acute care setting. This study developed and validated a newly created nausea assessment tool (NAT) designed for use with adult patients. The NAT was finalized and validated in two phases. Development of the NAT involved having at least 50 nurses and student nurses individually create their own version of the NAT based on a set of 10 different animated faces and 10 different descriptive phrases. A final NAT version was determined based on common sequences identified by the nurses/student nurses. The validation phase addressed content, convergent, and discriminant validity. Adult patients (N=100) were asked to rate their nausea on the NAT and a visual analog scale, as well as rate their pain on a separate visual analog scale. If they received treatment for their nausea, they were asked to again rate their symptoms on each of these scales post treatment. Data were initially be analyzed using descriptive statistics and scatter plots. Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) were calculated. Data collection and analysis are ongoing