• Palliative medicine · Feb 2014

    Validation of quality indicators for the organization of palliative care: a modified RAND Delphi study in seven European countries (the Europall project).

    • Kathrin Woitha, Karen Van Beek, Nisar Ahmed, Birgit Jaspers, Jean M Mollard, Sam H Ahmedzai, Jeroen Hasselaar, Johan Menten, Kris Vissers, and Yvonne Engels.
    • 1Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
    • Palliat Med. 2014 Feb 1; 28 (2): 121-9.

    BackgroundValidated quality indicators can help health-care professionals to evaluate their medical practices in a comparative manner to deliver optimal clinical care. No international set of quality indicators to measure the organizational aspects of palliative care settings exists.AimTo develop and validate a set of structure and process indicators for palliative care settings in Europe.DesignA two-round modified RAND Delphi process was conducted to rate clarity and usefulness of a previously developed set of 110 quality indicators.Setting/ParticipantsIn total, 20 multi-professional palliative care teams of centers of excellence from seven European countries.ResultsIn total, 56 quality indicators were rated as useful. These valid quality indicators concerned the following domains: the definition of a palliative care service (2 quality indicators), accessibility to palliative care (16 quality indicators), specific infrastructure to deliver palliative care (8 quality indicators), symptom assessment tools (1 quality indicator), specific personnel in palliative care services (9 quality indicators), documentation methodology of clinical data (14 quality indicators), evaluation of quality and safety procedures (1 quality indicator), reporting of clinical activities (1 quality indicator), and education in palliative care (4 quality indicator).ConclusionThe modified RAND Delphi process resulted in 56 international face-validated quality indicators to measure and compare organizational aspects of palliative care. These quality indicators, aimed to assess and improve the organization of palliative care, will be pilot tested in palliative care settings all over Europe and be used in the EU FP7 funded IMPACT project.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.