Generalizability and clinical utility of a practice-based infant pain assessment instrument

The purpose of this study was to determine the clinical usefulness and generalizability of an infant pain assessment instrument. Earlier work showed that this instrument--an algorithm derived from a model of infant pain assessment-possessed excellent content validity, criterion-like validity, and 3-month stability (test-retest reliability). In this study, generalizability was determined by comparing the percentage agreement between inexperienced pediatric nurses and one author, both using the tool to assess pain of infants in various clinical settings, and by comparing the percentage agreement between one author who used the tool to assess pain and the infant's pediatric nurse caretaker who used his or her clinical expertise, not the tool, to assess pain across various clinical settings. The results show excellent generalizability.