The development of an instrument to assess the needs of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Autori
Abstract
Introduction
As recommended, COPD patient-centred self-management interventions firstly have to identify patients needs to effectively support the patients to positively adapt their health behaviours and develop skills to manage their disease better. To our knowledge, no tools to measure the needs of people with COPD are present in the literature. Aim: To develop an instrument to assess the needs of people with COPD
Methods
A three round modified Delphi method was used. After the identification of the theoretical grounding and a literature review, domains and items were established. A panel of 8 experts was involved, including two pneumologists, a family doctor, a respiratory nurse, a respiratory physiotherapist, a psychometrist and two patients. An 80% agreement between experts was considered to reach consensus.
Results
In the first round experts were asked to make any changes to the initial version of the questionnaire (37 item). After the removal of the ten items that did not reach a consensus, a second round was performed that led to the deletion of two more items. Finally, a consensus was reached on a questionnaire consisting of 25 items distributed across four domains: information needs, needs relating to the symptoms of the disease, needs of family and social support, and needs related to the access to care.
Conclusions
The Needs in COPD Assessment questionnaire could be a useful tool to detect the needs of people with COPD. This tool, which covers a variety of domains, could be an easy to use instrument rather than questionnaires assessing single aspects of individuals with COPD needs. Further study to validate its psychometric properties are needed to implement it in clinical use.
