Abstract
Background:
Nursing documentation is essential for quality improvement and nursing research. In Denmark the nursing documentation is criticized for being insufficient, unsystematic and retrospective. The Swedish documentation model, the VIPS-model, was consequently introduced, and is now implemented in several Danish hospitals. An audit instrument, Cat-ch-Ing, has developed from the VIPS-model and a Swedish validating process found Cat-ch-Ing to be reliable. Cat-ch-Ing has only been tested in a few studies, but none of these focused on inter-observer variation.
Object:
To examine the inter-observer variation in Cat-ch-Ing.
Material:
The study comprised 20 VIPS-adjusted nursing records of women in confinement, hospitalized for a minimum of 3 days, and discharged directly to their homes.
Methods:
The inter-observer variation was identified by the average difference between the estimates of two observers. The agreement between the two observers is visualized in Bland-Altman plots.
Results:
The mean difference between the two observer estimates was close to zero, but there was considerable deviation between them. The percentage of agreement of the questions in Cat-ch-Ing varied from 25–100 %.
Conclusion:
The inter-observer variation of the Cat-ch-Ing was considerable. We recommend that Cat-ch-Ing is further developed and validated before being used to audit records in Denmark.