The palliative care self-reported practices scale and the palliative care difficulties scale: Reliability and validity of two scales evaluating self-reported practices and difficulties experienced in palliative care by health professionals

Background: The development of palliative care educational programs is ongoing in Japan. To assess the effectiveness of educational programs for general nurses, it is necessary to develop scales for evaluating them. Aims: The aims of this study were to develop two scales to measure the effectiveness of palliative care educational programs and confirm the validity and reliability of the scales. Methods: A questionnaire survey was validated with a group of 940 nurses at two facilities. The response rate was 85% (n=797). This study used psychometric methods such as factor analysis and intra-class correlation coefficients. Main results: We selected 18 items in 6 domains, including "dying-phase care," "patient- and family-centered care," "pain," "delirium," "dyspnea," and "communication" for the Palliative Care Self-reported Practices Scale (PCPS). For this scale, the intra-class correlation was 0.64 to 0.74 in each domain. For the Palliative Care Difficulties Scale (PDCS), we selected 15 items in 5 domains, including "communication in multidisciplinary teams," "communication with the patient and family," "expert support," "alleviation of symptoms," and "community coordination." For the PCDS, the intraclass correlation was 0.61 to 0.69 in each domain. Conclusions: The validity and reliability of these scales were established. Therefore, the clarification of actual practices used and difficulties experienced will be possible using these scales.