Validity and reliability study of 12 Item Pruritus Severity Scale for Turkish patients with burns

Itching sensation after burn injury has biological, psychological, and social effects on the patient. Objective assessment of itching in burn patients is a problem and one of the most important obstacles is the lack of adequate assessment criteria. This study was conducted to examine the validity and reliability of the "12 Item Pruritus Severity Scale" developed to assess the severity of itching in individuals with burn trauma for the Turkish population.

The study data were collected between January and June 2019 at the burn outpatient clinic in the Burn Center of a city hospital. The study included 120 patients in the age group of 18-65 years who had suffered a burn injury since September 2018, whose pruritus severity was 1 or higher according to VAS, and who were followed up in the burn outpatient clinic after being discharged at least 15 days after the burn injury. The data of the study were collected with a "12Item Pruritus Severity Scale". Language validity, content validity, convergent validity and internal consistency analysis were used for the validity and reliability study of the scale.

The internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale was found to be 0.79. The 7th item in the scale was not found to be correlated with the scale total score (p > 0.05), while the other 11 items were positively correlated with the scale total score (p < 0.0001). The concurrent validity of the scale was evaluated with VAS and the validity coefficient was found to be high (p < 0.0001).

Based on the data obtained from the study, the "12 Item Pruritus Severity Scale" adapted for the Turkish population was found to be valid and reliable to be applied to individuals with burn trauma.