Background Person-centered care (PCC) is increasingly emphasized as a key component of effective illness management and of developing high quality of care. Despite considerable progress of PCC in many areas of care there is currently a gap and a need for means to assess PCC practice in outpatient care. In rheumatology, PCC is considered an unmet need and further development and evaluation of this approach to care is thus of high priority.

Objectives To develop an instrument for measuring person-centered care from the perspective of the person with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in nurse-led outpatient clinics.

Methods A conceptual framework of PCC in the outpatient context and focusing on the meeting between the person with RA and the nurse and on the patient as an active care partner was undertaken. Based on this framework, qualitative interviews (1,2) and a literature review, a 35-item questionnaire was proposed and qualitatively tested regarding acceptability and content validity among 50 persons with RA attending a nurse-led outpatient clinic. Two versions of the questionnaire were tested: one using four response categories (0 = Totally disagree; 3 = Completely agree), and one using two response categories (0 = Disagree; 1 = Agree). Content validity was estimated by calculating Content Validity Index of the individual items (I-CVI) and of the overall instrument (S-CVI).

Results Respondents found the items easy to understand (77%) and relevant (93%). Seventy-three percent of the respondents preferred the questionnaire version with four response categories. This version took a mean (SD) of 5.3 (2.5) minutes to complete. I-CVI values ranged from 0.87 to 1.00 and S-CVI was 0.94. About 80% of the respondents considered some items to be redundant. This resulted in a reduced 24-item draft questionnaire that yield a total score between 0–72.

Conclusions A preliminary 24-item patient-reported PCC questionnaire was developed. Psychometric testing is needed for validation of this tool before implementation.