Objective: A more appropriate tool to measure
the client experience of person-centred care is
required to complement other existing measures
of quality. A tool developed in the United Kingdom
was trialled to determine its utility with a frail older
Australian population.
Design: A random sample of clients recently
discharged from a sub-acute setting over a 6-
month period in 2005 were sent a questionnaire
and invited to respond, a reply-paid envelope
being provided for the return of the questionnaire.
The questionnaire comprised the 20-item tool and
space to provide additional qualitative comments.
Setting: The inpatient wards of a sub-acute
facility in Melbourne.
Participants: From the random sample of 144
discharged clients, 78 responded to the questionnaire.
Main outcome measure: 20-item Patient-Centred
Inpatient Scale (P-CIS) developed by Coyle
and Williams (2001).
Results: Overall, there was a fundamental core
of person-centredness as demonstrated by a ratio
score of 0.68. Personalisation and respect dimensions
are the main strengths of person-centred
care in the health care setting in which the P-CIS
was trialled, with personalisation scoring 0.75 and
respect scoring 0.77. The miscellaneous components
scored 0.69. The findings show that areas
of the client experience warranting priority quality
improvement effort are specific to the dimensions
of empowerment (0.58), information (0.58) and
approachability/availability (0.43).
Conclusions: The P-CIS demonstrates the
potential to be a contributing component that
informs the monitoring and improvement of quality
person-centred care in Australian inpatient health
care settings.
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