Development of the Samuels Scale to rate pain management documentation.

Charting deficits and nominal-level data create difficulties when rating pain management documentation (PMD) quality. Researchers developed an interval level rating scale using Q-methodology. Pain entries (340), sorted into patterns, were rank ordered by nine pain management experts and distributed across a 7-point scale. Rankings demonstrated agreement (intraclass correlation coefficient = .96). One factor explained 77.19% of the variance. Reliability and validity were supported. Interval level data enable more robust testing of interventions to improve PMD outcomes.