Cuidados Paliativos e Medicina

Abstrato

The Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Audit Advance Care Planning

Daren K. Heyland*, Deb Pichora, Peter Dodek, Francois Lamontagne, John J. You, Doris Barwich, Carolyn Tayler, Pat Porterfield, Jessica Simon and Bert Enns

Background: Advance Care Planning (ACP) is established as a standard of care in many settings. However, no validated tool exists to measure participants’ perspectives on ACP. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire to assess ACP from the perspectives of patients and their family members, and to pilot the use of this questionnaire in both English and French.
Methods: To develop the ACP-specific questionnaire, items were generated from focus groups with health care professionals and face-to-face interviews withhospitalized patients and their families. The items from this novel questionnaire were combined with other validated evaluation instruments and then piloted in English-speaking hospitalized patients who had advanced, life-limiting illnesses and a version for their family members. Revisions were made based on that experience and feedback from content experts and this questionnaire was then piloted in another sample of French-speaking respondents.
Results: The novel questionnaire was divided into 2 parts, the first part focusing on ACP activities before admission to hospital (6 questions) and the second part relating to ‘goals of care’ discussions that occur during hospitalization (8 questions). For the English pilot study, the average duration of the entire interview (including consent, baseline demographics and other questionnaires) was 53.1 mins (range 35-80 mins) for patients and 60.8 mins (range 33-125 mins) for family members. English-speaking patients rated the burden of participating in the interview as a mean of 2.8 (Standard Deviation [SD] 1.9, 1=no burden, 10=extreme burden) and family members as 1.9 (SD 1.9). For the French pilot study, the results were similar.
Conclusions: This is the first ACP questionnaire to be developed that has face and content validity. Despite a relatively lengthy interview process, the ACP audit process seems feasible and is not associated with undue burden.