Revised American Pain Society Patient Outcome Questionnaire (APS-POQ-R) for Quality Improvement of Pain Management in Hospitalized Adults Preliminary Psychometric Evaluation

Quality improvement (QI) is a compilation of methods adapted from psychology stabs tics and operations research to identify factors that contribute to poor treatment outcomes and to design solutions for improvement Valid and reliable measurement is essential to QI using rigorously developed and tested instruments The purpose of this article is to describe the evolution of the American Pain Society Patient Outcome Questionnaire (APS POQ) for QI purposes and present a revised version (R) including instrument psychometrics An interdisciplinary task force of the APS used a step wise empiric approach to revise test and examine psychometric properties of the society s original POQ The APS POQ R is designed for use in adult hospital pain management QI activities and measures 6 aspects of quality including (1) pain severity and relief (2) impact of pain on activity sleep and negative emotions (3) side effects of treatment (4) helpfulness of information about pain treatment (5) ability to participate in pain treatment decisions and (6) use of nonpharmacological strategies Adult medical surgical inpatients (n = 299) from 2 hospitals in different parts of the United States participated in this study Results provide support for the internal consistency of the instrument subscales construct validity and clinical feasibility Perspective This article presents the initial psychometric properties of the APS POQ R for quality improvement purposes of hospitalized adult patients Validation in additional groups of patients will be needed to demonstrate its generalizability (C) 2010 by the American Pain Society