MEASURING ONCOLOGY PATIENT EXPERIENCE: QUESTIONNAIRE DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION

The experience of oncology patients has emerged as a critical measure of care quality within the framework of a patient-centered approach to assessing health system performance.The absence of a validated instrument specific to the Romanian context restricts healthcare centers' capacity to effectuate significant enhancements.This research focused on the development and validation of a standardized instr ument, the Oncology Patient's Healthcare Experience Questionnaire (OPEX), designed to evaluate the experiences of cancer patients.Materials and methods: This questionnaire was developed using a conceptual framework, which provided the foundation for creating the questionnaire items.The instrument's initial version underwent content validation with a sample of 50 patients, subsequently being administered to a larger cohort of 200 patients for psychometric analysis.The initial analysis of internal consistency yielded a Cronbach's a lpha of 0.604.Following item revision, this value improved to 0.867, demonstrating e nhanced reliability and validity.Results: The OPEX questionnaire includes 52 items grouped into seven essential dimensions of oncology care: interactions with physicians and nurses, patient information and education, hospital environment and organization, patient safety, r elationships with carers, interactions with auxiliary staff, and facility infrastructure.This robust instrument, tailored to Romanian healthcare, captures oncology patients' unique exper iences and improves the quality of patient-centered care.Conclusions: The OPEX questionnaire may serve as a reference tool for assessing patient satisfaction, providing insights into perceived care quality, identifying systemic gaps, enhancing clinical communication, pe rsonalizing interventions, and improving treatment adherence and therapeutic outcomes.