Smärtbedömning hos äldre personer med kommunikationssvårigheter – en utvärdering av den svenska versionen av Doloplus-2.

The aim of this study was to psychometrically test the Swedish version of the Doloplus-2 instrument for its use among older people. The Doloplus-2 instrument is a pain assessment tool that aims at measure pain among those who can not fully express their pain of various reasons. The instrument was tested in a sample consisting of 48 patients with cognitive impairment. Each patient was observed by two caregivers who evaluated the respondent's pain. One used only the Doloplus-2 scale and the other used both the Doloplus-2 and the UAB-scale. The UAB-scale was used as a «golden standard» because the UAB-scale has previously been found to be psychometrically valid and reliable. The Doloplus-2 scale was psychometrically evaluated by using Spearman's rank-order correlation, Kappa coefficients, and an explorative factor analysis. There was high correlation between the total score for Doloplus-2 and the UAB-scale, and the agreement was high between the two raters. Moreover, the factor analysis showed the same factor structure as the original instrument. Thus, the results indicated that Doloplus-2 had in general acceptable validity and reliability, and the instrument could be seen as a useful instrument to measure pain among elderly with communication difficulties.