The target population comprised patients over 18 years old admitted to one of the seven adult hospitalization units in the participating hospital. Special services (intensive care, emergency, operating theatres or resuscitation), home hospitalization, maternal-infant and obstetrics hospitalization units did not form part of this study due to differences in the type of care processes, in the organizational model of these units or in the assessment instruments used.
The unit of analysis was nursing assessments. Thus, the study included nursing assessments of functional capacity (Barthel index), risk of pressure ulcers (Braden index) and risk of falls (Downton scale) in the first 24 h after admission to ensure that data related to the time of admission were obtained for all patients. Otherwise, the exclusion criteria were nursing assessments of patients transferred from other units at the same hospital, or at another hospital because their assessments when hospitalized did not correspond to the initial assessment.
The literature recommends a sample size between 5 and 10 subjects per item to develop and validate assessment instruments [33 (link)]. The items for each instrument considered in the study totaled 21, which means that 210 nursing assessments was the minimum necessary sample size. However, no specific recommendations about sample size were found when combining or unifying several instruments. Notwithstanding, Palese et al. (2016) [11 (link)] used a sample with 1446 nursing assessments for a theoretical work with a similar objective. Therefore, considering that the maximum representativeness of the users of these services was sought, and as the analysis strategy required working with different subsamples, all the nursing assessments that complied with the selection criteria and were made during a four-month period (September 2021–January 2022) were included in this study.
The unit of analysis was nursing assessments. Thus, the study included nursing assessments of functional capacity (Barthel index), risk of pressure ulcers (Braden index) and risk of falls (Downton scale) in the first 24 h after admission to ensure that data related to the time of admission were obtained for all patients. Otherwise, the exclusion criteria were nursing assessments of patients transferred from other units at the same hospital, or at another hospital because their assessments when hospitalized did not correspond to the initial assessment.
The literature recommends a sample size between 5 and 10 subjects per item to develop and validate assessment instruments [33 (link)]. The items for each instrument considered in the study totaled 21, which means that 210 nursing assessments was the minimum necessary sample size. However, no specific recommendations about sample size were found when combining or unifying several instruments. Notwithstanding, Palese et al. (2016) [11 (link)] used a sample with 1446 nursing assessments for a theoretical work with a similar objective. Therefore, considering that the maximum representativeness of the users of these services was sought, and as the analysis strategy required working with different subsamples, all the nursing assessments that complied with the selection criteria and were made during a four-month period (September 2021–January 2022) were included in this study.
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