Polish adaptation and validation of burn specific health scale - brief

The Burn Specific Health Scale - Brief is a well-described, specific tool to assess health condition (quality of life) of burnt patients. This project was aimed at creating a Polish adaptation and validation of the Burn Specific Health Scale - Brief.

Adaptation of the tool was performed in two stages. The first stage involved translation, back translation, evaluation by a panel of judges and a pre-test of the tool. The second stage consisted of surveying 202 burned patients. Those data were used to conduct a psychometric analysis. Reliability was checked by determining the Cronbach's α internal consistency coefficient and conducting the test-retest procedure (ICC). Content validity was evaluated by a panel of judges. Criterion validity was determined using SF-36. Construct validity was determined using known-groups validation.

Reliability of the tool, determined using the internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach's α=0.94) and the test-retest procedure (ICC=0.89), proved to be high. Criterion validity, determined using the relationship of results of comparable BSHS-B and SF-36 subscales, obtained a satisfactory level with a correlation of r=0.55-0.89 (p<0.01). Analysis of inter-group differences showed that patients who stayed at a hospital for more than 10 days (p=0.002), patients after surgical intervention (p=0.018), patients with a burn larger than 19% of the TBSA (p=0.01) and patients with 3rd degree burns (p=0.001) have much poorer results than the rest of the subjects.

The Polish version of BSHS-B is a reliable and valid tool for assessing quality of life of burned patients. It may be used to plan the burn treatment process and evaluate its outcomes.