Construct validity of acute morbidity as a novel outcome for emergency patients

Fabrizia Schmid; Alexandra Malinovska; Karin Weigel; Tito Bosia; Christian H Nickel; Roland Bingisser

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207906

Construct validity of acute morbidity as a novel outcome for emergency patients

PLoS One. 2019 Jan 2;14(1):e0207906. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0207906. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Fabrizia Schmid¹, Alexandra Malinovska², Karin Weigel³, Tito Bosia¹, Christian H Nickel¹, Roland Bingisser¹

Affiliations

¹ Emergency Department, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
² Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
³ Joint Practice Boettcher and Hoeller, Laufenburg, Germany.

Abstract

Objectives: Validation of acute morbidity as a novel outcome in emergency medicine.

Methods: Construct validity of acute morbidity was established by comparison to other outcomes using linear and logistic regression models.

Results: Data of 4608 patients were analysed. 1869 patients (40.6%) fulfilled the criteria for acute morbidity. Using multivariate analyses, acute morbidity was associated with outcomes such as hospitalisation (OR: 11, 95%-CI 9-13), mortality (OR 15, 95%-CI 6-49), and ICU admission (OR: 46, 95%-CI 25-96). Reliability of the construct "acute morbidity" was estimated using Cohens Kappa, which was 0.96 for intra-rater and 0.94 for inter-rater reliability.

Conclusion: Reliability of the framework for acute morbidity was high. Construct validity was shown by associations with hospitalisation, mortality, and ICU admission.

MeSH terms

Emergencies*
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Morbidity*
Multivariate Analysis
Reproducibility of Results

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.