Palliative care is provided at different care settings by different professionals, making management and organisation of services crucial. A comprehensive tool to systematically evaluate the quality of palliative care and identify potential areas for organizational improvement is highly warranted. The aim was to develop and examine the content validity of a questionnaire evaluating quality of palliative care from the perspectives of healthcare professionals in different care settings: the Quality of Palliative Care Questionnaire – Staff (QPCQ-S). This methodological study included booth qualitative and quantitative methods. The QPCQ-S was developed from existing questionnaires. Questions were modified to represent broad perspectives of palliative care before being reviewed by an expert group consisting of researchers in palliative care. A preliminary version was reviewed by healthcare professionals (n = 16), and the response options were examined, based on responses from 98 healthcare professionals who had participated in a development project. Cognitive interviews (n = 13) were performed with healthcare professionals. Finally, the questionnaire was evaluated by 421 healthcare professionals within a nursing home context. Convergent validity was supported by the expert and advisory groups, and cognitive interviews. Problems with ceiling and floor effects was demonstrated for some items, which resulted in a more differentiated response scale for these items. A majority of the respondents reported the questions as important or fairly important (99.3%), and that the questions had provided them with the opportunity to give a true picture of palliative care (78.9%). However, a majority reported that the questions were difficult or fairly difficult to answer (64.0%), significantly more among nurse assistants compared to nurses, physicians and other professional with academic education (p = 0.031). The QPCQ-S showed good content validity, and the questions were reported important, giving a true picture of palliative care. Careful preparation is needed considering by whom and in what context the CPCQ-S are best used for evaluation of palliative care.
Harstäde et al. (Fri,) studied this question.