The Design and Verification of Chinese Standard Scale for Discharging from the Postanesthesia Care Unit

Objective: To design a Chinese scale for discharging from the Postanesthesia Care Unit (PACU), and to validate its stability and reliability. Methods: According to the evaluation methods of post-anesthesia recovery and the currently commonly used international anesthesia recovery scale, combined with the clinical situation of post-anesthesia care unit in our country, a multi-dimensional post-anesthesia recovery scale was formulated. The revised version of the scale was formed after the relevant experts discussed. One hundred and three patients undergoing general anesthesia were selected and evaluated by the revised scale. Item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and reliability test were conducted to verify the reliability and stability of the scale. Results: The item analysis results of the revised scale showed that each item of the scale had high homogeneity with the total score of the scale. The results of critical ratio method and correlation coefficient method showed that the difference between the high score group and the low score group was statistically significant (P<0.05). The correlation coefficient between each item score and the total score of the scale was statistically significant (P<0.05), and each item of the revised scale had good discrimination. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the revised scale was 0.647, indicating that the detection effect of each item was reliable. After excluding any item, Cronbach's α was above 0.5, indicating good internal consistency, high stability and satisfactory reliability of the scale. Conclusion: The standard scale for discharging from the Postanesthesia Care Unit developed in this study can evaluate the recovery quality of post-anesthesia patients from multiple dimensions with high discrimination, reliability and stability.