Psychometric Properties of the Behavioral Pain Scale in Traumatic Brain Injury

Pain assessment of patients with traumatic brain injury is a challenge because they are unable to self-report their pain experience. To investigate the psychometric properties of validity, reliability, and responsiveness of the Brazilian version of the Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS-Br) in patients with traumatic brain injury. This was an observational, cross-sectional, repeated-measure and analytical study. This study was developed at the medical and surgical ICUs in a high-complexity public hospital at Aracaju, Sergipe, Brazil. Thirty-seven adult patients with moderate or severe TBI were included. This study was completed with 444 independent observations, a pairwise comparison, and was performed simultaneously before, during, and after eye cleaning and endotracheal suctioning of 37 adult patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. The BPS-Br had good internal consistency (.7 ≤ α ≤ .9), good discriminant validity (p