DSNCPD-ICU — Difficulty Scale for Nurses who Care for Patients with Delirium in the Intensive Care Unit

What this tool is and how to interpret its evidence

DSNCPD-ICU measures difficulties reported by nurses who care for patients with delirium in intensive care. It is a workforce and service-improvement questionnaire, not a patient screening or diagnostic tool. The original instrument has a 33-item main scale organised into eight factors and a separate four-item scale concerning difficulty using delirium screening tools. The main domains cover challenges in assessment, multidisciplinary management, safety, hypoactive delirium, staff stress, medication adjustment, family involvement and resources. This structural description is sufficient to understand its purpose without reproducing the questionnaire.

Owaki and colleagues developed the scale through item generation, content review and psychometric testing with 211 ICU nurses in Japan. The published work examined factor structure, internal consistency and relationships with relevant experience. A later Chinese adaptation used translation and cultural adaptation procedures and was tested in 437 nurses, providing additional evidence for version-specific reliability and construct validity. Results for a translated version should not be treated automatically as performance of the Japanese original in every setting.

The scale may help researchers and organisations identify areas where nurses need education, multidisciplinary support or resources. It does not establish whether a patient has delirium, quantify a patient's symptom severity or measure the quality of a particular nurse. Responses may depend on staffing, local roles, screening policy and case mix. Comparisons between services therefore require careful attention to language version and context.