Cross-cultural adaptation and content validation into Spanish of instruments for the assessment of competence in ultrasound-guided vascular access (UGVA)

UGVA is a widely adopted technique in advanced clinical practice, particularly among patients with difficult intravenous access (DIVA). To date, none of the existing instruments to asses UGVA presents complete psychometric properties or has been culturally validated for the Spanish-speaking context — the USGPIV Procedural Checklist and the Peripheral Ultrasound-guided Vascular Access Rating Scale (P-UGVA RS). The present protocol describes Phases 1 to 4 of the instrumental study, which aims to validate both instruments for the Spanish context and evaluate their content validity and their psychometric properties following the most recent recommendations (Mokkink et al., 2024; Muñiz et al., 2013; Sousa & Rojjanasrirat, 2011). The design comprises: translation and back-translation (Phase 1), review by a methodological expert committee (Phase 2), quantitative Delphi panel with ≥50 experts (Phase 3) and psychometric evaluation (Phase 4). The planned timeline for these phases extends to March 2027.