Journal of Palliative Care & Medicine
Open Access

Abstract

Objectives: Assessment of advanced cancer patients’ needs is very important issue in palliative care. The aim of the study was to adapt the Sheffield Profile for Assessment and Referral for Care (SPARC) to the Polish environment and to evaluate its usefulness in needs assessment of patients with advanced cancer.\ Patients & Methods: A forward–back translation of SPARC to Polish was conducted. SPARC was used once in fifty eight consecutive patients with advanced cancer during follow–up. The patients were enrolled from a palliative care unit (25 patients), home care (18 patients) and a Day Care Centre (15 patients). The reliability was evaluated by establishing internal consistency using Cronbach alpha coefficients. Content validity was analyzed based in accordance with Murray’s and Maslow’s theories of needs as a non– statistical method of validity assessment. Factor analysis with principal components extraction and varimax rotation on raw data was employed to reduce the set of data and to assess the construct validity. Results: There were differences in religious and spiritual issues, independence and activity between patients staying at the palliative care unit (worse results), and those at the day care centre (better scores). Communication and need for more information items were associated with psychological, social, spiritual and treatment issues. Cronbach alpha coefficients and factor analysis demonstrated, respectively, satisfactory reliability and construct validity of the tool. Conclusion: The study demonstrated that the Polish version of SPARC is a valid and reliable tool recommended for the needs’ assessment and symptom evaluation of patients with advanced cancer.

Biography

Email: wojciechleppert@wp.pl