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Measuring quality of patient information documents with an expanded EQIP scale
A I Charvet-Berard1, P Chopard, T V Perneger
1Quality of Care Unit, Geneva University Hospitals, Switzerland. a.charvet@fgdcs.ch
Patient Education and Counseling
|February 5, 2008
Summary
An expanded Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP) scale reliably assesses patient document quality. While many documents describe interventions, few quantify risks or include patient participation, highlighting areas for improvement in health information standards.
Area of Science:
- Health Communication
- Medical Informatics
- Patient Education
Background:
- High-quality patient information is crucial for informed healthcare decisions.
- Existing tools for assessing patient document quality may lack comprehensiveness.
- The Ensuring Quality Information for Patients (EQIP) scale previously existed but required expansion.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate an expanded version of the EQIP scale.
- To enhance the measurement of quality in patient information documents.
- To assess the quality of medical procedure leaflets using the revised scale.
Main Methods:
- Expanded the 20-item EQIP scale by adding 16 new items, resulting in a 36-item tool.
- Items covered document content, structure, and identification data.
- The revised scale was used to rate 73 patient information leaflets from a university hospital, with reliability assessed through inter-rater and intraclass correlation coefficients.
Main Results:
- The expanded EQIP scale demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability (kappa=0.84) and intraclass correlation (0.95).
- Leaflets frequently stated the intervention's purpose (74%), described qualitative risks (64%), and used a logical order (73%).
- Significant deficiencies were noted in quantifying risks (7%), providing balanced information (33%), using everyday language (22%), and including author/funding details (25%/4%).
Conclusions:
- The expanded EQIP scale is a reliable and useful tool for evaluating patient information documents.
- Patient information leaflets partially meet international quality standards.
- Document producers should prioritize adherence to guidelines and patient involvement in information creation.
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