Development of the health literacy assessment instrument for chronic pain patients: A Delphi study.
Siqing Chen, Meijuan Cao, Jing Zhang and 3 others
PMID 36564937WHAT IT FOUND
A draft 41-item instrument to assess chronic pain patients' functional, interactive and critical health literacy was agreed by experts.
It was not tested with patients, so it is not a validated clinical tool yet.
Key findings
01A draft health literacy instrument for chronic pain patients was finalised with 41 items across functional, interactive and critical health literacy.
02Experts revised the item set over two Delphi rounds: after round one 9 items were deleted, 2 merged, 3 added and 10 modified; after round two 1 item was deleted, 1 split and 11 modified.
03The instrument was not tested with chronic pain patients, and the authors say reliability and validity still need further verification.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
No chronic pain patients took part, so the tool has not been checked against how patients actually answer it. The authors state that reliability and validity still need further verification. All experts were from China, so the wording may not fit other languages or cultures. The reported second-round expert count is inconsistent: one sentence says 19 completed two rounds, while the table and response counts report 17. The paper reports a draft instrument, not evidence that using it improves pain or self-management.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use this 41-item questionnaire as a validated health literacy measure for chronic pain patients. It was developed only by expert consensus and has not been tested in patients.