Advancing family-centred care measurement in adult critical care: psychometric testing of the MPOC-SP(A) tool in South Africa

Background: The Measures of Process of Care for Service Providers (MPOC-SP(A)) tool, developed by the CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research in Canada, assesses service providers’ perceptions of Family Centred Care (FCC) in adult rehabilitation. The study aimed to adapt and validate the MPOC-SP(A) tool for use in adult intensive care units (ICUs) to assess patient- and family-centred care delivery. The original tool consisted of 27 items categorised into four domains: “showing interpersonal sensitivity”, “providing general information”, “communicating specific information”, and “treating people respectfully”. Following our initial content validation study, the number of items was reduced to 24. This study, which is the final validation phase of the MPOC-SP(A) tool, aims to evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the tool adapted for adult ICUs (MPOC-SP(A)) in South Africa. Method: Following approval from the Human Research ethics committee, a 24-item tool, developed through content validation, was administered to 134 healthcare professionals working in adult ICUs across public and private hospitals in South Africa. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tested the tool’s factor structure for goodness-of-fit, and reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Results: The CFA supported a four-factor structure with acceptable model fit indices. Overall, the tool showed excellent internal consistency (α = 0.93), while moderate ICC values indicated adequate test-retest reliability. Conclusions: These findings support the MPOC-SP(A) as a culturally sensitive tool for assessing healthcare providers’ perceptions of family-centred care (FCC) in South African ICUs.

Intensive care units; Family-centered care; Psychometrics

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