Child/adolescent-reported experience measure

Patient perception of empathy is related to outcome of, and compliance to, treatment [26]. The Visual Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE)-measure five questions (5Q) [27] is a patient-rated experience measure of the interpersonal quality of healthcare encounters. The measure is shown to have been valid and reliable in both primary and secondary care, among children, adolescents and adults and in several countries worldwide [28, 29]. The measure is found both feasible and acceptable to use in a routine paediatric setting [30], and of particular importance for patients with complex health complaints [31]. The children and adolescents were asked to rate the team in terms of their ability to make the child/adolescent feel happy and calm (item 1), asking questions and letting the child talk (item 2), listening and understanding (item 3), explaining things (item 4) and making a plan (item 5). Response options are based on a 5-point visual analog scale with scores from “not very good” to “excellent” and a “not applicable” option [27]. The measure is reported to have a high internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha 0.88) when used with children and adolescents in specialist healthcare [26]. With permission from the developer of the CARE measure, we adapted the measure to provide an evaluation of the whole TpT-team, versus just one clinician, as originally designed.