Involvement of people who use alcohol and other drug services in the development of patient-reported measures of experience: A scoping review

Abstract

Introduction: Patient-reported measures that assess satisfaction and experience are increasingly utilised in healthcare sectors, including the alcohol and other drug (AOD) sector. This scoping review identifies how and to what extent people accessing AOD services have been involved in the development of satisfaction and experience measures to date. Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Scopus, ProQuest, Google and Google Scholar were searched. Included papers described the development and/or implementation of a multiple-item measure of patient-reported experience or satisfaction specifically for people accessing AOD treatment and/or harm reduction programmes. If there was more than one paper, key papers were chosen that described each measure. The method of development, including service user involvement, was assessed against a framework generated for this review. Two reviewers were involved at each stage. Results: Thirty measures—23 satisfaction and 7 experience—were identified. Sixteen measures reported some level of involvement by people accessing AOD services in their development, although, for most measures, at a relatively low level. This involvement increased over the time span of the review becoming more frequent in later years. Only four measures were developed for use in harm reduction-specific settings, and fewer than half reported undertaking analysis of underlying scale structure and constructs. Conclusion: Several gaps could be addressed to enhance the measurement of patient-centred care in the AOD sector, including: developing experience measures for use in harm reduction settings and across various AOD settings in a service system; improved reporting of psychometric properties of these measures and increasing commitment to the meaningful involvement of AOD service users in measure development. Patient or Public Contribution: This scoping review is part of a broader codesign project that involves a partnership between the peak organisation for AOD services and the peer-based AOD consumer organisation in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia. These organisations are working closely together to engage with AOD service users, service providers and policy makers in this codesign project. As such, the Executive Director of the peer-based AOD consumer organisation is involved as a co-author of this scoping review.