[Construction of an Instrument of Risk Assessment and Injury Severity for the Diaper Area in Infants: RDIC-lac].

OBJECTIVE

To design an instrument to measure impairment of skin integrity in the diaper area of infants and severity of injury for the prevention and management of irritative diaper dermatitis.

METHODOLOGY: Design in 3 phases: 1) comprehensive review and critical appraisal of literature to design the preliminary content of the instrument; 2) critical evaluation of initial proposal by an expert group (nursing and pediatric medicine) with opinion survey and ad hoc questions; 3) content analysis using data tabulation for the modification and final design of the instrument.

SETTING

Primary Care Management of Tenerife.

RESULTS

In the 1st phase a proposed instrument is designed: two groups of risk factors (10 modulators risk and 9 high risk); and a severity scale with 5 aspects to assess including 4-5 items each (depth, location, extension, type of injury, signs of infection). The 2nd phase involved 19 professionals. A Tabulation of the data grouped into add or omit factors was used. The 3rd phase ends with a modified version of the instrument: 10 modulating factors, 5 of hig risk and 4 items for each aspect to assess severity.

DISCUSSION-

CONCLUSIONS

The scarce bibliography found and absence of similar tools explain the design. The next phase will be the validation of RDIC-lac instrument.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Susceptibility to prevent skin lesions in the diaper area in the pediatric age.