Eliciting the impact of digital consulting for young people living with long term conditions (LYNC study): which Patient Reported Outcome Measure? (Preprint)
Authors: Sturt Jackie , Dliwayo Rebecca , Forjaz Vera , Hamilton Kathryn , Bryce Carol , Fraser Joseph , Griffiths Frances 
Published: February 2018

BACKGROUND

Digital consulting e.g. email, text and skype is increasingly offered to young people accessing specialist care for long term conditions. No patient reported outcome measures (PROM) have been evaluated for assessing outcomes of digital consulting. Systematic and scoping reviews, alongside patient involvement revealed two candidate PROMs for this purpose, the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) and the Physician’s Humanistic Behaviours Questionnaire (PHBQ). PAM measures knowledge, beliefs and skills that enable people to manage their long term condition. The PHBQ measures the extent to which behaviours that are important to patients in their physician-patient interactions are present.

OBJECTIVE

To explore i) whether the PAM and the PHBQ elicit important outcomes of digital consulting ii) whether the PROMs can isolate the digital consultation component of care.

METHODS

Participants were drawn from five clinics providing specialist NHS care to 16-24yrs olds with long term health conditions participating in the wider LYNC study. Fourteen people were convenience sampled and consented to have a cognitive interview in this sub-study. Seven participants were young people with either inflammatory bowel disease, cystic fibrosis or cancer. Seven clinicians were clinical psychologist, two nurses, three consultants and a community youth worker practising in Cancer, Diabetes, Cystic Fibrosis and Liver disease. Cognitive interviews were transcribed and analysed and a spread sheet recorded participants’ PROM item appraisals. Illustrative quotes were extracted verbatim from the interviews for all participants.

RESULTS

Young people found 10 of the PAM 13 items to be relevant to digital consulting and fewer of the additional PAM 22 items. They were only able to provide a spontaneous examples of digital consulting for 50% of the 22 items. Four of the 6 clinicians appraised 12 of the PAM 13 items and 19 of the PAM 22 items to be relevant to evaluating digital consulting and articulated operationalisation of the items with reference to their own digital consulting practice with greater ease than the young people. Appraising the PHBQ, in 14 of the 25 items (56%) 2/3rds of young people’s appraisals offered digital consulting examples with ease suggesting that the young people can detect and discern humanistic clinician behaviours via digital as well as face to face communication channels. Seventeen of the 25 items (68%) were appraised as relevant by the young people. This finding was mirrored in the clinician appraisals. Both young people and clinicians found the research task complex. Young participants required considerably more researcher prompting to illicit examples related to digital consulting rather than their face to face care.

CONCLUSIONS

The PAM and the PHBQ have satisfactory face and content validity for evaluating digital consulting to warrant proceeding to psychometric evaluation. Completion instructions require revision to differentiate between digital and face to face consultations.