Translation of a patient-surgeon relationship assessment instrument (Q-PASREL) into six languages

The Questionnaire for Patient-Surgeon Relationship (Q-PASREL) is a French "Patient-Reported Experience Measure" for hand surgery patients. It is the only one which considers the impact of the patient-surgeon relationship on time to return to work and cooperation by the surgeon for administrative issues. It has been shown that a good Q-PASREL score is associated with shorter sick leave and faster return to work. To make this instrument available to more countries, we translated the Q-PASREL into six languages (English, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic and Persian), following a validated "translation and cultural adaptation" process guideline. This process includes multiple forward and backward translations, discussions and reconciliations with final harmonization and cognitive debriefing. For each language, a team was set up, comprising a key in-country hand surgery consultant, native target-language speaker and fluent in French, and several forward and back translators. The final translated versions were reviewed and approved by the project manager. The six versions of Q-PASREL are now available in the appendices of this publication.