• Yeur-Hur Lai, Shu-Liu Guo, Francis J Keefe, Li-Yun Tsai, Shiow-Ching Shun, Yu-Chien Liao, In-Fun Li, Ching-Ping Liu, and Yun-Hsiang Lee.
• Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1 Jen-Ai Rd., Sec. 1, Taipei, 100, Taiwan. laiyhwk@ntu.edu.tw
• Support Care Cancer. 2009 Dec 1;17(12):1445-53.

IntroductionCancer pain is identified as a multidimensional experience, but relatively few brief instruments are available for assessing the complex pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan. The purposes of this study were to (1) translate and examine the feasibility and psychometric characteristics of the eight-item Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese (MPI-sC) when used with patients having terminal cancer and (2) apply the MPI-sC to examine multidimensional pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan.Materials And MethodsThe MPI-sC was tested in 106 terminal cancer inpatients at a hospice setting in Taipei.ResultsThe results showed that the MPI-sC has satisfactory face and content validity, feasibility, acceptable internal consistency reliability (overall Cronbach's alpha of 0.75), and overall support of theoretical assumptions. However, instead of the four-factor structure of the original instrument, we found a three-factor structure (with pain intensity and pain interference merged into one factor) that explained 76.73% of the variance. Close to half the patients (48.1%) had considerable levels of pain interference, and a majority (72.6%) reported not having control in life based on the cut-point of MPI-sC categorization.ConclusionOur results support the brief MPI-sC as a feasible and valid tool for assessing and representing multidimensional pain experiences in terminal cancer patients. The MPI-sC could help clinicians and researchers assess the complex multidimensional pain experiences of terminal cancer patients, including Chinese-speaking cancer populations.

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