The PCQ-Infertility Revised: A New Digital Instrument to Measure Treatment Satisfaction of Fertility Patients

One of the key dimensions of healthcare quality is patient-centeredness, which represents how well healthcare is geared towards patients' needs and wishes. Many questionnaires that measure the patient-centeredness are long and complicated, eliciting non-response or careless responding. Moreover, responses to some commonly used questionnaires are difficult to interpret. The Patient-Centeredness Questionnaire-Infertility (PCQ-Infertility) is used to measure the patient's experience of fertility healthcare quality. The aim of this study was to improve the PCQ-Infertility to allow large-scale clinical implementation.

The study was performed in three parts. First, shortcomings of the original PCQ-Infertility were identified by evaluation of expert opinions. Second, the number of items were reduced, and items were rescaled and rephrased. Third, 844 patients filled in the original PCQ-Infertility and 260 patients filled in the revised PCQ-Infertility and reliability analyses were performed. In addition, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the revised PCQ-Infertility.

The number of items in the revised questionnaire was reduced by 24% (from 51 to 39 items), which increased the internal consistency and reliability. The reliability analyses and confirmatory factor analysis indicated high consistency and convergent validity in all seven dimensions (accessibility, information, communication, patient involvement, respect for patient's values, continuity and transition, and competence) of the revised PCQ-Infertility.

The revised PCQ-Infertility is a more valid and reliable instrument than the original PCQ-Infertility, easier to interpret and shorter. Therefore, large-scale clinical implementation and data analysis are now possible, giving the opportunity for fertility care professionals to evaluate and improve their healthcare.