• Hong Li, Ya-Lan Liu, Li Qiu, Qiao-Ling Chen, Jing-Bing Wu, Li-Li Chen, and Na Li.
• Nursing department, Fujian Provincial Hospital, Fujian Medical University Affiliated Clinical Medical Institute, Nursing School of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou City, 350001 Fujian Province, China.
• Nurs Crit Care. 2016 Sep 1; 21 (5): e11-21.

BackgroundFamily members provide essential support for ICU patients, contributing to their mental and physical recovery. Empowering ICU patients' families may help them overcome inadequacies and meet their own and patients' acknowledged needs. Nursing should understand and address patients' families' empowerment status.Aims And ObjectivesTo develop a tool, the Nurses' Empowerment Scale for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Patients' Families (NESIPF), to help ICU nursing staff assess the empowerment status of patients' families.DesignFour-phase instrument development study.MethodsA 19-item instrument was initially generated based on literature review and interviews with family members of ICU patients. The Delphi research method was applied to gain expert opinion and consensus via rounds of questionnaires. A panel of 27 experts experienced in critical care medicine, nursing and psychology participated in two Delphi rounds and their input helped formulate an 18-item pretest instrument. Families of 20 patients were recruited to examine instrument readability. After a 2-week interval, another 20 patients' families were recruited to examine test-retest reliability. Two hundred questionnaires were then administered and analysed to examine the instrument's construct validity, criterion-related validity and internal consistency.ResultsExpert authority coefficients of two Delphi rounds reached 0·89 and 0·91. Kendall' W coefficients of 0·113 (P < 0·001) in round 1 and 0·220 (P < 0·001) in round 2 indicated slight to fair agreement among experts. Content validity index (CVI) reached 1·0 for 12 items; the CVI for item 13 was <0·7 so it was excluded. Cronbach's α coefficient was 0·92, indicating acceptable internal consistency reliability. The coefficient of internal consistency of each dimension was 0·717-0·921. The Pearson correlation coefficient >0·9 (P < 0·05) showed an acceptable test-retest reliability.ConclusionsThe instrument has acceptable reliability and validity and can assess the empowerment status of families of critically ill patients.Relevance To Clinical PracticeKnowledge of families' empowerment status may help to address their psychological needs and their ability to provide family support.© 2014 British Association of Critical Care Nurses.

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