Translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and validation of the Palliative Care Knowledge Questionnaire for PEACE...

The PEACE-Q was translated into Brazilian Portuguese and validated for use with medical residents. The Brazilian version of the instrument showed acceptable consistency, moderate reliability, and appropriate validity for assessing palliative care knowledge among this population.

Performance was < 70% in 10 of the 33 items.

Lowest performance domains were Oncologic Pain and Opioid Side Effects.

Residents in clinical specialties outperformed those in surgical or mixed specialties.

Residents with ≥3 years of training outperformed those on their first 2 years.

To translate, cross-culturally adapt, and validate the Palliative Care Knowledge Questionnaire for PEACE (PEACE-Q) in Brazilian Portuguese.

This study followed five steps: translation, back-translation, cultural adaptation, pre-test, and test-retest. Pre-test (n=20) and test-retest (n=63) were conducted on medical residents from Santa Casa Hospital in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We determined the content validity index, Kuder-Richardson-20 (KR-20) value, and intraclass correlation coefficient. The performances of residents with different years of training and specialty areas were compared using the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests.

The translated version of the instrument comprised 33 items divided into nine domains, with a content validity index of 0.95. The test-retest on medical residents showed an internal consistency (KR-20) of 0.60 (95% confidence interval (95%CI)=0.54-0.66) and intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.71 (95%CI=0.51-0.82). Medical residents of clinical specialties showed better overall scores than those of surgical or mixed specialties (median scores [IQR]: 27.0 [25.0-28.0], 26.0 [23.0-28.0], and 23.5 [21.5-25.5], respectively; [p=0.013]). Regarding year of training, medical residents on year three or beyond had higher scores in the "Opioid Side Effects" domain than those on the first 2 years [median scores (IQR): 2.0 (2.0-3.0) versus 2.0 (1.0-2.0); p=0.03].

The Brazilian version of the PEACE-Q demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and moderate reliability and appears appropriate for assessing the palliative care knowledge of Brazilian medical residents.