CN26 - Healthcare professionals’ perceptions on palliative care in onco-haematological area: Validation of the palliative care perception instrument

Background

Several studies show that integrated early palliative care in onco-hematology improves patients’ quality of life, symptoms control, physical and mental health, and use of health resources. To better understand potential barriers and facilitators that may influence the referral of onco-hematological patients to palliative care it is necessary to investigate the perception of healthcare professionals in onco-hematological field on palliative care. This study aims to validate an instrument to assess healthcare professionals’ perceptions of palliative care in onco-hematological area.

Methods

This is a validation study. The instrument is a questionnaire developed based on the questions of the study by Tay et al., 2021 . The validation of the instrument is ongoing, according to the COSMIN guidelines, and consists of content validation, face validation, and pilot test. To date, we completed content and face validity, which involved 5 experts in the field and 15 possible volunteer respondents, respectively.

Results

We calculated the Content Validity Index (CVI) for each item (I-CVI) and for the entire questionnaire (S-CVI). Every item obtained an I-CVI above 0.7, except for one item that obtained an I-CVI of 0.6. The item was considered acceptable and maintained since the S-CVI score was 0.95, meaning that the Italian experts found the instrument to be relevant to evaluate the topic investigated. After face validity, the questions that were considered confusing or containing difficult terms were rephrased according to participants’ suggestions. None of the items was considered offensive. The final questionnaire consists of 22 items divided into 3 sections: demographics, perception, and professional behavior. The pilot test is ongoing and will allow us to assess reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity.

Conclusions

Validation results up to this point are promising, the completion of the validation process will allow obtaining a valid and reliable instrument that will help future researchers to investigate barriers and facilitators to the integration of palliative care in the onco-hematological field.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

University of Genoa.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.