Reliability and validity of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Burns Specific Pain Anxiety Scale (BSPAS).

Background: Pain and anxiety are a common problem in all recovery phases after a burn. The Burns Specific Pain Anxiety Scale (BSPAS) was proposed to assess anxiety in burn patients related to painful procedures.

Objectives: To assess internal consistency, discriminative construct validity, dimensionality and convergent construct validity of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the Burns Specific Pain Anxiety Scale.

Design: In this cross-sectional study, the original version of the BSPAS, adapted into Brazilian Portuguese, was tested for internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha), discriminative validity (related to total body surface area burned and sex), dimensionality (through factor analysis), and convergent construct validity (applying the Visual Analogue Scale for pain and State-Anxiety-STAI) in a group of 91 adult burn patients.

Results: The adapted version of the BSPAS displayed a moderate and positive correlation with pain assessments: immediately before baths and dressings (r=0.32; p<0.001), immediately after baths and dressings (r=0.31; p<0.001) and during the relaxation period (r=0.31; p<0.001) and with anxiety assessments (r=0.34; p<0.001). No statistically significant differences were observed when comparing the mean of the adapted version of the BSPAS scores with sex (p=0.194) and total body surface area burned (p=0.162) (discriminative validity). The principal components analysis applied to our sample seems to confirm anxiety as one single domain of the Brazilian-Portuguese version of the BSPAS. Cronbach's Alpha showed high internal consistency of the adapted version of the scale (0.90).

Conclusion: The Brazilian-Portuguese version of the BSPAS 9-items has shown statically acceptable levels of reliability and validity for pain-related anxiety evaluation in burn patients. This scale can be used to assess nursing interventions aimed at decreasing pain and anxiety related to the performance of painful procedures.