The development and testing of a survey to measure patient and family experiences with injury care.

BACKGROUND: To deliver patient-centered trauma care, we must capture patient and family experiences with the services they receive. We developed and pilot tested a survey to measure patient and family experiences with major injury care.
METHODS: We conducted a structured literature review and focus groups to generate survey items. We pilot tested the survey at a Level I trauma center and assessed feasibility of implementation and construct validity with Spearman's correlation coefficients. Open ended questions were qualitatively analyzed to explore whether responses corroborated survey content.
RESULTS: We developed a survey with two parts: acute care component (46 items) and post-acute care component (27 items) with nine domains. We offered the survey (acute care component offered before hospital discharge, post-acute care component offered 1-7 months after discharge) to 170 patients/families, of whom 134 (79%) responded. Patients were primarily male (73%) with major injuries (median Injury Severity Score, 18; interquartile range, 16-25). Overall, respondents for both the acute care and post-acute care components of the survey reported being completely (47% vs. 26%), very (37% vs. 38%), or mostly (16% vs. 21%) satisfied with their injury care, whereas a minority reported being slightly (0% vs. 9%) or very (0% vs. 6%) dissatisfied (p = 0.002 Fischer's exact test). Most survey items were significantly correlated with overall satisfaction (46 of 60 items). Almost all qualitatively identified themes matched survey domains, adding support to the survey content.
CONCLUSION: This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of implementing a survey to capture patient and family experiences associated with major injury care and provides preliminary evidence of the instrument's content and construct validity. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Epidemiologic study, level III.