[A pilot study on the living with a chronic process scale in patients with Parkinson's disease]

To be able to provide patients with a chronic illness personalised care, it is necessary to know how they live with their disorder. Today, there is no validated scale that assesses this aspect.

To present the pilot study of the preliminary version of the living with a chronic process scale (EC-PC, from the name in Spanish) carried out in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) in Spain.

A preliminary version of the scale was produced from a literature review and the participation of experts in chronic processes and in PD. Fifteen patients, in all the different stages of PD, answered the preliminary version of the EC-PC (39 items) and a questionnaire about the EC-PC. The viability/acceptability and preliminary aspects of internal consistency were analysed.

No domain showed any floor or ceiling effects, but 43.6% of the items had a ceiling effect. The corrected item-total correlation was satisfactory, except in five items. The internal consistency of the five domains was satisfactory, with alpha indexes of 0.81-0.92 and item homogeneity coefficients of 0.19-0.43. The patients identified three items as ambiguous and difficult to answer. Based on these results, 12 items were eliminated and the final version of the EC-PC was drafted, its content being considered satisfactory following its evaluation by expert professionals.

The EC-PC, pending validation, is a viable scale of potential interest in the clinical and community healthcare setting for assessing the ability to live with a chronic process like PD.