This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0269216308096526v1 22/7/822    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Schleinich, M. Articles by Watanabe, S Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Schleinich, M. Articles by Watanabe, S Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Palliative care rehabilitation survey: a pilot study of patients' priorities for rehabilitation goals

Tertiary Palliative Care Unit, Grey Nuns Community Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta mapax{at}primus.ca

S Warren

Rehabilitation Research Centre, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

C Nekolaichuk

Division of Palliative Care Medicine, Department of Oncology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

T Kaasa

Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

S Watanabe

Division of Palliative Care Medicine, Department of Oncology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

Rehabilitation in palliative care is often overlooked. Settings that do consider occupational or physical therapy for palliative care patients often consult to therapists with competing caseloads. Few therapists specialise in palliative care, but nearly all ask, ‘What needs doing'? and ‘How well am I doing that'? No existing instruments address their questions. The objective is to develop and test a questionnaire for identifying patient goals and priorities for rehabilitation in palliative care. A questionnaire representing 11 domains of the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance was designed and pilot tested at four palliative care sites. Each question reflected a typical rehabilitation intervention in palliative care. Patients were asked to rate how important each of these interventions was on a numerical rating scale (0, not important–10, extremely important). Open-ended questions captured verbatim comments regarding thoughts of rehabilitation. The questionnaire was tested for test-retest reliability with two interviews approximately 1 week apart. Forty patients participated in the first interview and 32 in the second. Eight of eleven domain sub-scores achieved an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.6 or higher. The highest means were for the physical (8.2), institutional (7.8) and self-care (7.8) domains on the first interview and for the spiritual domain (7.9) on the second interview. Suggestions are provided to shorten the questionnaire and strengthen validity. This work furthers the understanding of the role of rehabilitation in palliative care. It also illustrates the feasibility of involving palliative care patients in research that contributes to setting standards and measuring quality of service.

Key Words: health services research • instrument development • needs assessment • occupational therapy • palliative care – standards • rehabilitation

This version was published on October 1, 2008

Palliative Medicine, Vol. 22, No. 7, 822-830 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0269216308096526


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?