Design and development of the home healthcare worker observation tool

The rapidly growing number of home healthcare workers (HHCW) are exposed to unique occupational hazards within each patient home. This article describes the development of an observation tool to document occupational hazards HHCWs encounter.

Tool development followed three steps: determining content domain, content validity, and inter-rater agreement.

Expert feedback guided the revision of content domain to 636 items. Scale level content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.90. Inter-rater agreement tests resulted in percent agreement and accuracy mean of 89.5% and frequency variables resulted in standard deviations from 0 to 8.62.

The observation tool encompasses the diverse range of occupational hazards HHCWs encounter; inter-rater percent agreement and overall accuracy scores were acceptable. Future pilot testing of this tool among broader raters and populations is recommended to characterize its usability, internal consistency, and reliability to assess HHCW occupational hazards.