The Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) is a widely used tool for assessing patient needs in palliative care.
The aim of this study was to provide a validated version of the patient and staff IPOS for French-speaking Switzerland (IPOS-Fr) and assess its psychometric properties.
The validation took place in 12 palliative care units and mobile teams. At baseline (T1) and three days later (T2), patients' general health status, palliative care needs (IPOS-Fr), and quality of life (McGill Quality of Life Scale-Revised) were assessed by patients and staff.
We included 173 patients (mean age: 68.8; 92 women; 85% oncologic disease). IPOS internal consistency was high for the total score (0.69 and 0.71). Staff-patient interrater agreement was good to moderate for 13 items (intraclass correlations >0.516). Results indicated strong correlations between IPOS-Fr and McGill Quality of Life Scale-Revised for the total score (-0.623 at T1) and the psychological domain (Item 11: -0.601 at T1; Item 13: -0.633 at T2). Regarding sensitivity to change, there was a significant difference between T1 and T2 for patients with an improved health condition (z = -2.326; P = 0.020).
IPOS-Fr has fair to good validity, especially with regard to interrater agreement and construct validity, is sensitive to positive change, and has good interpretability and acceptability for patients and staff. IPOS-Fr is not optimal in terms of internal consistency and structure when using subscale scores, except for the emotional subscale.