Validation of a tool for measuring person-centred care across settings and professional groups

Abstract Background Person-centred care (PCC) is promoted as a way to improve the health of patients and staff, as well as support staff retention in health and social care. The growing global interest for health systems to adopt the PCC approach rise the need for evaluation of its efficiency. However, there is a lack of instruments to measure PCC among staff across care contexts and professional groups. As part of the ongoing PCC@Work project, an adapted version of the Swedish Person-Centred Care Assessment Tool (P-CAT) was validated to support its broader application. Methods This cross-sectional study included baseline data from 2269 health and social care professionals working in hospital, municipal and regional primary care settings in Western Sweden. The P-CAT is a self-report tool containing 13 items rated on a five-point Likert scale. It consists of two subscales: Extent of Personalising Care (EPC) and Organisational and Environmental Support (OES). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed to assess construct validity, and Cronbach's alpha was used to assess internal consistency reliability. Results The analyses supported a two-factor structure. Factor loadings were acceptable, ranging from 0.40 to 0.78, and the two factors explained 52.2% of the variance (EPC 35.3%; OES 16.9%). The findings showed very good internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.84 for the full scale, 0.85 for EPC, and 0.82 for OES. Conclusions The adapted P-CAT demonstrated acceptable construct validity and very good internal consistency reliability. These findings represent an important initial step in validating the adapted Swedish P-CAT. Valid and reliable evaluation instruments facilitate follow-up studies of introduction of PCC and contribute to good quality research on the efficiency of the approach to improve the health and wellbeing of patients and health and retention of staff. Key messages • The analysis showed acceptable construct validity and very good consistency reliability, representing an important initial step in validating the adapted Swedish P-CAT. • The adapted Swedish P-CAT can be used to enhance our understanding of the impact of PCC and contribute to public health by identifying ways to improve health outcomes for both patients and staff.