Assessment of IDC-Pal as a Diagnostic Tool for Family Physicians to Identify Patients with Complex Palliative Care Needs in Germany: a Pilot Study

• Published in: Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Ärzte des Öffentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)) Vol. 80; no. 10; p. 871
• Main Authors: Comino, María Rosa Salvador, Garcia, Victor Regife, López, Maria Auxiliadora Fernández, Feddersen, Berend, Roselló, María Luisa Martin, Sanftenberg, Linda, Schelling, Jörg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: German
• Published: Germany 01.10.2018
• Subjects: Germany; Humans; Needs Assessment; Palliative Care; Physicians, Family; Pilot Projects; Reproducibility of Results; Surveys and Questionnaires; Germany
• ISSN: 1439-4421
• DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-104215

Palliative medicine is an essential component of the health care system. Basic palliative care should be provided by primary care services (family physician and home nursing) with palliative-medical basic qualification. Often it is very difficult to identify patients that would profit from a specialized palliative care team. For the evaluation of the case complexity of a palliative patient, we present a Spanish diagnostic tool IDC-Pal, which tries to specify when, why and where a palliative patient should be referred. The aims of this study were the translation and cultural adaptation of the diagnostic tool for complexity in palliative care IDC-Pal to the German language, and the measurement of its feasibility and face validity. During the first phase, a forward-backward translation with linguistic and cultural adaptation of the tool IDC-Pal as well as the validation of its content by a review committee was performed. During the second phase, the preliminary version of the tool was tested by 38 family physicians that were asked for a qualitative assessment using a 10-points Likert scale (1 = "strongly disagree" and 10 = "totally agree"). Finally, a definitive version was developed. The translation and adaptation were achieved without major problems. Both feasibility and apparent validity of the tool IDC-Pal were rated as high. The mean response in the Likert scale was 7.79, with a SD of 0.36. Participants strongly agreed on the apparent validity of the tool with a mean of 7.82 and a SD of 0.26 and on its feasibility with a mean of 7.79, and a SD of 0.39. A conceptually, culturally and linguistically equivalent version of the original instrument IDC-Pal was obtained. German family physicians agreed on the usability of IDC-Pal as a tool for rating the case complexity of palliative patients. These results indicate that physicians in Bavaria and eventually in Germany could benefit of the full validation of IDC-Pal.