Development and psychometric evaluation of patient-centered care questionnaire in cardiac intensive care units

Patient-centered care (PCC) is a valuable and logical concept in the nursing discipline. The aim of this study was to development and psychometrically evaluate a patient-centered care questionnaire in CICUs (PCC-CICUs).

This methodological study was performed in two phases. The first phase is the qualitative stage by grounded theory study in which, a literature review was carried out for tool development. The second phase includes a psychometric evaluation of the PCC-CICUs. The tool’s content validity was performed by skilled nurses in the field of patient-centered care. The reliability of the tool was assessed by Cronbach's alpha and its stability was measured by internal consistency and reliability. Exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the construct validity.

The PCC-CICUs was evaluated for validity and reliability. Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the construct validity. The analysis led to the development of a tool with 28 items in four dimensions of patient and family empowerment, understanding the patient, skill and expertise, and respecting the patient and family, which accounted for 35.380% of the variance. Cronbach's alpha of the tool was 0.68. The test-retest method supported the stability of the instrument.

Patient-centered care questionnaire in cardiac intensive care units is a standard and accepted questionnaire to assess the amount of patient-centered care from the patients' point of view. Health care professionals can use the PCC-CICUs to assess their own and peers’ practice to detect potential areas for improvement in nursing care and help nurse managers with planning appropriate quality improvement programs.