Development of the "Whittener Activity Catalog of Self-Care in Venous Ulcer"

Abstract

Poor rates of healing and high rates of re-ulceration are characteristic of venous leg ulcer. The performing of special health-deviation self-care is important for the successful treatment and prevention of this chronic disease. This study aimed to validate a newly designed instrument for the measurement of specific self-care. The "Wittener Aktivitätenkatalog der Selbstpflege bei venös bedingten offenen Beinen" (WAS-VOB) (a catalogue containing self-care activities for venous leg ulcer) was conceptualized on the basis of Orem's theory and on pathophysiological processes. The items were created by using patient interviews (n = 20) and a literature review. An analysis of the reliability was used to reduce the raw scale. The quality of the WAS-VOB was assessed for face-validity (n = 6), feasibility (n = 8), test-retest-reliability (n = 60) and the internal consistency (n = 234). The involvement of patients was based on an informed consent. The WAS-VOB is a self-describing instrument, includes 59 self-care activities and describes those in eight scales which deal with "general compression", "wearing compression bandages", "wearing compression hosiery", "mobility", "temperature", "overload of the venous system", "prevention of skin damage" and "wound healing". The WAS-VOB is practicable and has good psycho-metric characteristics. The test-retest-coefficient (Kendall's tau b) is 0.58, Cronbach's alpha 0.72. The instrument WAS-VOB is suitable for the assessment of self-care deficits.