Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Purpose: The Relational Aspects of Care Questionnaire (RAC-Q) is an electronic instrument which has been developed to assess staff's interactions with patients when delivering relational care to inpatients and those accessing accident and emergency (A&E) services. The aim of this study was to reduce the number of questionnaire items and explore scoring methods for "not applicable" response options. Patients and methods: Participants (n=3928) were inpatients or A&E attendees across six participating hospital trusts in England during 2015-2016. The instrument, consisting of 20 questionnaire items, was administered by trained hospital volunteers over a period of 10 months. Items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis to confirm unidimensionality, and the number of items was reduced using a range of a priori psychometric criteria. Two alternative approaches to scoring were undertaken, one treated "not applicable" responses as missing data, while the second adopted a problem score approach where "not applicable" was considered "no problem with care." Results: Two short-form RAC-Qs with alternative scoring options were identified. The first (the RAC-Q-12) contained 12 items, while the second scoring option (the RAC-Q-14) contained 14 items. Scores from both short forms correlated highly with the full 20-item parent form score (RAC-Q-12, r=0.93 and RAC-Q-14, f=0.92), displayed high internal consistency (Cronbach's α: RAC-Q-12=0.92 and RAC-Q-14=0.89) and had high levels of agreement (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]=0.97 for both scales). Conclusion: The RAC-Q is designed to offer near-real-time feedback on staff's interactions with patients when delivering relational care. The new short-form RAC-Qs and their respective method of scoring are reflective of scores derived using the full 20-item parent form. The new short-form RAC-Qs may be incorporated into inpatient surveys to enable the comparison of ward or hospital performance. Using either the RAC-Q-12 or the RAC-Q-14 offers a method to reduce missing data and response fatigue.

Original publication

DOI

10.2147/PROM.S157213

Type

Journal article

Journal

Patient Relat Outcome Meas

Publication Date

2018

Volume

9

Pages

173 - 181

Keywords

emergency care, hospital care, patient experience, real-time feedback, surveys