Capturing patients' views on communication with anaesthetists: the CARE Measure

The purpose of this paper is to determine the relevance and reliability of the ten‐item Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) Measure as a tool for measuring patients' views of anaesthetists during preoperative assessment consultations.

Self‐completed patient questionnaire containing the ten‐item CARE Measure. Consecutive adult patients were asked to complete the ten‐item CARE questionnaire immediately after their pre‐operative assessment consultation with the anaesthetist and return it to a designated local co‐ordinator. Reliability co‐efficient of the overall measure, and relevance of each item to patients' concerns were measured.

Using the Measure, 31 consultant anaesthetists were assessed by 1,582 patients (559 male, 952 female). The total number of “not applicable” responses was 1,086, (6.8 per cent of the total number of possible “not applicable” responses). The overall number of missing values was 0.6 per cent. The measure effectively discriminated between doctors (reliability co‐efficient of the average score per doctor provided by 40 patients was above 0.8) and had high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha, 0.93).

The present study presents evidence of a tool which may have utility in anaesthetics and other settings.