Introduction. The Nurses' Cancer Pain Management Competency Scale (NCPMCS) is a tool designed to explore nurses' skills and subjective experiences in managing cancer pain and to help nurses understand their current pain management deficiencies. Furthermore, based on the specific scale score, nurses can evaluate their lack of understanding in cancer pain management, advance research in this area, and improve their ability to control cancer pain during care. The scale is currently only available in English and Chinese.

Objective. The aim of this study is to translate this instrument and measure its reliability and validity in the Italian context.

Study design. Multicenter methodological research model.

Methods. The population of this methodological study includes Italian nurses from Northern, Southern and Central Italy. An online questionnaire was sent to a total of 400 nurses serving in the medical oncology departments of 20 Italian hospitals in the month of May 2024. The respondents were currently 108 nurses, predominantly female (72%) with an average age of 41 years, work experience of approximately 14 years of which at least 9 in the oncology department.

First results of the validation study. Cronbach's alpha estimated at 0.756. Guttman semi-reliability of the rated scale of 0.842. Regarding the Scale Item Analysis, the results show that the T values ​​of each item vary from 5.221 to 17.421 (p< .05 for all values), indicating a high discrimination between the items, furthermore the Pearson correlation coefficient between the scores of each item and the total scale score is 0.489-0.719 (p< .05 for all values).

Regarding the Scale Validity Analysis, the item content validity index (I-CVI) of the scale is 842-1.000 and the S-CVI value is 0.848, based on the results of expert consultation. Exploratory factor analysis of the study reveals that the KMO-test value is 0.992 and the χ2 value of Bartlett's test of sphericity is 2344.325 (p< .001), meeting the requirements for the analysis. Nursing competence in cancer pain management includes four factors, accounting for 62.13% of the variance: the context of pain management, pain assessment and measurement, pain management and the multidimensional nature of pain. On a 4-point scale for total competence, the mean scale score is 2.97 ±0.25. The multidimensional nature of pain (3.01 ±0.64) was the factor that showed the highest mean score, while the management of pain factor was the lowest (2.41 ±0.52).

Conclusions. The first results show that nursing competence in managing cancer pain could be assessed using the Italian version of the Nurses' Cancer Pain Management Competency Scale, pending the conclusion of the study and the enrollment of other nurses who responded to the questionnaire.