Background: Access to palliative care services are not equitable. This may be because clinicians do not know how to identify suitable patients. Currently, there is no standardised screening measure to guide the referral of patients and families into specialist palliative care.
Aim: To develop a new screening measure for identifying patients with advanced illness to be referred to specialist palliative care. The first version of the screening measure will be completed by health or social care professionals. A later version will be designed for use by patients and carers.
Method: A multi-method psychometric approach was used. This included a review of the literature and interviews with health and social care professionals and patients. Relevant issues relating to access to palliative care were identified from the interview transcripts and assessments of health and social care papers. All relevant issues were developed into questions with an appropriate response category.
Results: 207 papers associated with access and referral was identified. Thirtysix interviews were conducted: patients (n=15) and professionals (n=21). From the papers and interviews a list of 281 issues and items was identified. Common issues were highlighted and similar items grouped together. This resulted in the identification of 45 common problems. From these 45 issues, 51 questions were developed. A further eight issues were identified by the research team and the project advisory group and were included. Six questions concerning general health were also added. The initial version of the questionnaire contained 65 questions.
Conclusion: A preliminary version of a screening tool for use by health and social care professionals has been developed. This next stage of development is to pilot test the questionnaire in order to reduce the number of questions; and to gather feedback from the users.