Project overview
Incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases have sufered a significant increase in today's society, due to demographic changes occurring in the population structure in the 20th century in Europe and Spain. According to the official report established by the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality (2012), in depth understanding of how the person lives with a chornic illness is paramount to provide holistic and quality care, according to the specific demands of each person. In this respect, the use of clinical instruments that allow to asses and gain knowledge on the process of living with a chronic illness, from the patient's perspective, is strongly advocated. At present, the Living with Chronic Illness Scale (EC-PC, from Escala de Convivenca con un Proceso Crónico) is the only measurement tool that evaluates how the patient is living with a chronic illness from a holistic perspective. The EC-PC is an innovative clinical measure that evaluates the degree of living with a chronic illness form the patient perspective. The aim of this study is to validate the EC-PC in a population with different, prototipical and high prevalence chronic ilnesses in nowadays society such as, diabetes mellitus type 2, chronic heart failure, COPD and osteoarthritis. For this purpose, a descriptive, observational, international and transversal study will be carried out. A sample o patients will be selected form a national level (Navarra, La Rioja, Madrid, Valencia, Malaga). The psychometric properties analysed will be: feasibility and acceptability, scaling assumptions, reliability, precision and construct validity (convergent validity, internal and known-groups validity). The results that will emerge from this validation study will allow concluding whether the EC-PC is a valid and reliable scale to measure the degree of living with a chronic illness, and consequently, to be used in clinical setting. In this way, health and social care professionals will be able to design individualized interventions, according to the specific needs of each person. It should be noted that this project is part of a larger, multidisciplinary, and lead by nurses research programme, named 'ReNACE Programme', aimed at promoting the integration of different chronic illnesses in the live of patients and their families, caregivers through the design, implementation and evaluation of multidisciplinary and individualized interventions.
