Abstract
The "Self-Treatment of Wounds for Venous Leg Ulcers Checklist" (STOW-V Checklist V1.0) is an evidence-based, standardised tool designed to assist nurses to appraise the conduct of wound treatment when undertaken by patients who have venous leg ulcers. A prospective reliability study was conducted to determine the reliability of the STOW-V Checklist V1.0. Video-recordings of patients who self-treated their leg ulcer were obtained (n = 5) and nurses (n = 15) viewed each video-recording three times and concurrently completed the Checklist. Internal consistency, inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability were evaluated. Cronbach's alpha for items in the Checklist was 0.792, 0.791 and 0.783 for Occasions 1, 2 and 3, respectively, indicating good reliability. Inter-rater reliability was 0.938, 0.958 and 0.927 for Occasions 1, 2 and 3, respectively; these results were statistically significant and indicative of excellent reliability. Intra-rater reliability was 0.403 to 0.999; these results were statistically significant and meeting or exceed adequacy in the case of all except two raters. The study provides preliminary evidence that the Checklist is measuring the concepts that it intends to measure and that there is a high level of agreement among raters. It is recommended that the STOW-V Checklist V1.0 is utilised with patients in a shared-care model, with nurses and other healthcare professionals providing supervision and oversight of self-treatment practices whenever this is feasible and acceptable to the patient.