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Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese version (MPI-sC): psychometric testing in terminal cancer patients in Taiwan

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Abstract

Introduction

Cancer pain is identified as a multidimensional experience, but relatively few brief instruments are available for assessing the complex pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan. The purposes of this study were to (1) translate and examine the feasibility and psychometric characteristics of the eight-item Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese (MPI-sC) when used with patients having terminal cancer and (2) apply the MPI-sC to examine multidimensional pain-related experiences of terminal cancer patients in Taiwan.

Materials and methods

The MPI-sC was tested in 106 terminal cancer inpatients at a hospice setting in Taipei.

Results

The results showed that the MPI-sC has satisfactory face and content validity, feasibility, acceptable internal consistency reliability (overall Cronbach’s alpha of 0.75), and overall support of theoretical assumptions. However, instead of the four-factor structure of the original instrument, we found a three-factor structure (with pain intensity and pain interference merged into one factor) that explained 76.73% of the variance. Close to half the patients (48.1%) had considerable levels of pain interference, and a majority (72.6%) reported not having control in life based on the cut-point of MPI-sC categorization.

Conclusion

Our results support the brief MPI-sC as a feasible and valid tool for assessing and representing multidimensional pain experiences in terminal cancer patients. The MPI-sC could help clinicians and researchers assess the complex multidimensional pain experiences of terminal cancer patients, including Chinese-speaking cancer populations.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by a grant to Dr. Yeur-Hur Lai from the College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. The authors thank Dr. Kerns for his permission to translate the MPI screening form and all the study participants for sharing their experiences. The authors also thank Claire Baldwin for her English editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nursing, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, 1 Jen-Ai Rd., Sec. 1, Taipei, 100, Taiwan

    Yeur-Hur Lai, Shiow-Ching Shun & Yun-Hsiang Lee

  2. Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Shu-Liu Guo

  3. Pain Research Program, Duke University, Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Francis J. Keefe

  4. Department of Nursing, MacKay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

    Li-Yun Tsai, In-Fun Li & Ching-Ping Liu

  5. Department of Nursing, Yuan-Pei University, Hsin-Chu, Taiwan

    Yu-Chien Liao

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  1. Yeur-Hur Lai
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  2. Shu-Liu Guo
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  3. Francis J. Keefe
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  4. Li-Yun Tsai
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  6. Yu-Chien Liao
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  9. Yun-Hsiang Lee
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Correspondence to Yeur-Hur Lai.

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Lai, YH., Guo, SL., Keefe, F.J. et al. Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Screening Chinese version (MPI-sC): psychometric testing in terminal cancer patients in Taiwan. Support Care Cancer 17, 1445–1453 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-009-0597-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-009-0597-3

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