An international validation study of the care thermometer: a tool supporting the quality of ergonomic policies in health care.

Occupational back pain among nurses leads to high costs and personal suffering for nurses. It is difficult to assess the success of such initiatives and to monitor results in a practical way. Such a practical monitoring and web-based instrument was developed. This Care Thermometer (CT) allows the users to assess the current situation in their facility today, and, with regular use, it can help to track progress over time. The Care Thermometer is a further step in the development of the TilThermometer, a validated assessment tool that is used on a large, national scale in The Netherlands. The claims of the newly developed Care Thermometer are ambitious and an international validation study was performed in four countries: the UK, USA, Germany and the Netherlands. The instrument appears to be sufficiently valid, useful and practical. There are however some points to keep in mind when interpreting the results of the CT. Especially a careful, punctual and stringent data collection phase is crucial for accurate and useful results. Some recommendations to further improve the practical use both for the design of the instrument and the process of data-collection and -entering are given.