Development and Validation of the French Version of the Scale Observation Comportementale du Confort d’Enfants Brûlés (OCCEB-BECCO)
Introduction. Burn care causes children a great deal of pain and apprehension. Comfort, a concept referring as much to the absence of physical pain as to well-being, is a key consideration in assessing the quality of nursing care provided to young burn victims. However, no instrument existed to measure level of comfort of child burn victims during the delivery of painful care procedures. Objective. To develop and validate a scale to measure the comfort level of young child burn victims subjected to painful care procedures. Methods. Following a review of the literature, 38 items were generated to measure comfort in this context. These were reduced to 14 by a panel of 13 healthcare professionals. The items were then grouped under four main headings: face, cry, movement, and attitude. Finally, the new instrument (OCCEB-BECCO) was pre-tested on 16 burn victims under the age of 5. Results. Experts found the instrument to be clear, concise and easy to use. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.82. The correlation between the OCCEB-BECCO and the Face Legs Activity Cry Consolability (FLACC) scale was high (r≥0.95) at all times of measurement. Discussion and conclusion. The first scale of its kind, the OCCEB-BECCO is a reliable and valid measure of the comfort level of young child burn victims during painful procedures. However, more research is needed with larger samples to complete the scale’s validation.