International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

Background: There is a lack of standardized instruments for measuring the quality of psychiatric care. The International Project on Quality in Psychiatric Care is a large research programme aiming at adapting the patients and staff versions of the instrument Quality in Psychiatric Care (QPC) to different international settings.

Aims: The aims are to test the psychometric properties and equivalence of dimensionality of different language versions of the QPC and to describe and compare the quality of in-patient, out-patient and forensic in-patient psychiatric care across different countries.

Method: The QPC is a family of instruments that cover four areas of psychiatric care: out-patient (QPC-OP), in-patient (QPCIP), forensic in-patient (QPC-FIP) and addiction out-patient care (QPC-AOP). All versions are also adapted for use by staff and next of kin.

Results: The first part of this program in forensic in-patient care in Denmark is completed. The second part in Indonesia shows that in-patient and staff concur on the meaning of quality held by patients in Sweden, with regard to encounter, participation and secure environment. There is, however, less agreement on what constitutes quality of discharge and support. Several studies are ongoing in Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, Norway and Faeroes.

Conclusions: The meaning of quality in psychiatric care is to a large extent similar across a variety of languages and countries. Thus the different versions of the QPC are expected to make a contribution to the development in the psychiatric field and benchmarking across different psychiatric settings and countries in order to improve the quality of care

Biography

Agneta Schroder has completed her PhD in 2006 from Linkoping University, Sweden. She is an Associate Professor and Research Leader at the University Health Care Research Center, Orebro, Sweden and Professor at NTNU, Gjovik, Norway. Her research area is quality of care in the psychiatric field, with particular emphasis on the development of measuring instruments. She has been selected by the World Scientists Forum and the International Research Promotion Council (IRPC) as “Eminent Scientist of the year 2009” International Award in the field of Mental Health and Psychiatry based on her contribution in the field.

E-mail: agneta.schroder@regionorebrolan.se