Abstract
Objective
To develop a comprehensive assessment tool to evaluate the Quality of Care (QoC) in managing individuals with traumatic spinal cord injuries (TSCI).
Method
At first, the concepts of QoC for TSCI were identified by conducting a qualitative interview along with re-evaluation of the results of a published scoping review (conceptualization). After operationalization of indicators, they were valued by using the expert panel method. Afterward, the content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) were calculated and served as cut-offs for indicator selection. Then specific questions were developed for each indicator and classified into three categories: pre-hospital, in-hospital, and post-hospital. Data availability of the National Spinal Cord Injury Registry of Iran (NSCIR-IR) was subsequently used to design questions that represent indicators in an assessment tool format. The comprehensiveness of the tool was evaluated using a 4-item Likert scale by the expert panel.
Result
Twelve experts participated in conceptualization and 11 experts participated in operationalization phase. Overall, 94 concepts for QoC were identified from published scoping review (87 items) and qualitative interviews (7 items). The process of operationalization and indicator selection led to the development of 27 indicators with acceptable content validity. Finally, the assessment tool contained three pre-hospital, twelve in-hospital, nine post-hospital, and three mixed indicators. Ninety-one percent of experts evaluated the entire tool as comprehensive.
Conclusion
Our study presents a health-related QoC tool that contains a comprehensive set of indicators to assess the QoC for individuals with TSCI. However, this tool should be used in various situations to establish construct validity further.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Change history
06 September 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41394-023-00578-2
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Funding
This work was funded by Tehran University of Medical Sciences, [grant number is 98-01-38-41516]. Also, the research reported in this publication was supported by Elite Researcher Grant Committee under award number [972056] from the National Institutes for Medical Research Development (NIMAD), Tehran, Iran. Also, Sina Trauma and Surgery Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences [grant number: 97-02-38-39581] funded this work.
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Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
VRM: conceiving the presented idea, and supervising all steps and the findings of this work. SMGH: helping supervise the project; ZGH: Executive managing the all involved team, draft writing with input from the authors, developing assessment tool (Supplementary Appendix 1), professional team member; SBJ: performing the analytic calculations, interpretation of the results, contribution to draft writing; ZA: contribution to developing assessment tool (Supplementary Appendix 1); VB: performing the analytic calculations, interpretation of the results; AA, MF, AAz, AP, MSN: Expert team member. MB, MM, KN, MS: Health care Professional team members; RH: qualitative interviewer, Professional team member. SFM, RH, HD, AS: Indicators information collect, contribution to developing the checklist; ARV, GMO, BMD, LY, JSH: Expert panel, and contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
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Competing interests
We declare no competing interests regarding our research except for Alex R. Vaccaro (Supplementary Appendix 2).
Ethics approval
The Ethics Committee of Tehran University of Medical Sciences approved the study. The reference number is IR.TUMS.VCR.REC.1398.332 and the Ethics Committee of National Institutes for Medical Research Development (NIMAD) approved the study. The reference number is IR.NIMAD.REC. 1397.519. In addition, the Research Ethics Committees of School of Medicine for Tehran University of Medical Sciences approved the NSCIR-IR with approval ID of IR.TUMS.MEDICINE.REC.1401.133.
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Ghodsi, Z., Jazayeri, S.B., Pourrashidi, A. et al. Development of a comprehensive assessment tool to measure the quality of care for individuals with traumatic spinal cord injuries. Spinal Cord Ser Cases 9, 12 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41394-023-00569-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41394-023-00569-3
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