Australian Palliative Care Outcome Collaboration (PCOC) phases: cross cultural adaptation and psychometric validation...

Measuring palliative care quality requires the application of evaluation methods to compare clinically meaningful groups of patients across different settings. Such protocols are currently lacking in Poland. The Australian Palliative Care Outcome Collaboration (PCOC) concept of Palliative phases precisely defines patients, enables episodes of care extraction for benchmarking and further assessment of service delivery. The present study is aimed at developing cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric validation for a Polish translation of Palliative phases.

Forward and backward translation was performed to obtain a Polish draft version regarding definitions of the PCOC phases. The draft was then subjected to linguistic and graphical transformations in the process of cognitive interviewing. The acceptability of the Polish version was assessed based on staff perceptions of fit, ease of assignment and familiarity with the patient's and family's situation. Finally, cross-sectional analysis was conducted among 313 hospice and home-care palliative patients. The attending doctor and nurse independently evaluated the same patients using the Polish version of the PCOC phases to establish inter-rater reliability values. Then, to determine its construct validity, the PCOC indicators were referred to patients' prognosis, functioning level and PALCOM scale scores.

A Polish draft version of the PCOC phases was prepared. Seven of the 13 interviewees reported problems with comprehending this proposal. This prompted changes being made to linguistic and graphical aspects of the tool. The majority of respondents preferred the final graphical scheme of phases, prepared after round-two of interviews. Scheme application acceptability was confirmed in a practical trial. The respondents' overall conviction regarding degree of fit and assignment ease was high. Seventy percent of PCOC phase assignments was in agreement, and a moderate level or inter-rater reliability was obtained (kappa 0.573). The highest proportion of totally bed-bound patients with the shortest survival prognosis was observed for the terminal phase, while the highest complexity of palliative care needs was noted for the unstable one.

The PCOC phases tool appears to be a valuable resource for specialists in palliative care settings to support audit measures. Practical training is recommended prior to its implementation in routine practice.