Purpose: This study aimed to develop and validate a patient-reported experience measure (PREM) to examine the patients' perspectives on the quality of outpatient physiotherapy and occupational therapy rehabilitation.
Materials and methods: A systematic literature search in PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Cinahl was conducted to identify relevant themes for the questionnaire. Fourteen studies were analyzed through a systematic text condensation to identify quality aspects in the rehabilitation from patients' perspectives. Further, based on the analysis, 13 items with answers on a five-point Likert scale were developed. Face validity and content validity were established during interviewing 14 municipality outpatients. Finally, to determine the construct validity and internal consistency, the questionnaire was distributed to 385 patients with various diagnoses.
Results: The final questionnaire, Outpatients' Experience of quality in Rehabilitation (OPER), demonstrated good face and content validity and covered patients' experience of quality in municipal rehabilitation. Data from 307 respondents established construct validity and high internal consistency and showed, in general, a positive experience of outpatient rehabilitation.
Conclusions: The OPER demonstrates satisfactory psychometric properties based on an extensive development and validation process. By assessing outpatients' experience of the rehabilitation process, OPER offers a measurement of the quality of therapists' practice of patient-centered rehabilitation.
Keywords: Psychometric properties; municipal rehabilitation; occupational therapy; patient-centeredness; physiotherapy; satisfaction.
Quality in outpatient rehabilitation should be measured with patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) that encompass patients’ experience of the rehabilitation process.Based on analyses of the literature and a thorough validation process, the study developed a PREM for outpatient rehabilitation: OutPatients’ Experience of quality in Rehabilitation (OPER).OPER demonstrates satisfying psychometric properties in an outpatient population with various diagnoses.OPER is based on patient-centeredness in meeting with physiotherapists and occupational therapists.