Feasibility and acceptability of the brief patient-reported experience measure consideRATE within the hospital setting for patients with palliative care needs, their families/carers and clinicians.

Background: Supporting clinical teams to improve care for inpatients with palliative care needs and their carers is a known priority. Patient reported experience measures (PREMs) may assist in improvement work. Evidence about how to collect and feedback PREM data for this population and context is required.

Aim: To determine the feasibility of implementing a brief, validated PREM, consideRATE and appraise its acceptability as perceived by inpatients with palliative care needs, their carers and clinicians.

Design: A prospective study using: 1) PREM administration, screening log and field note completion; and; 2) a focus group with clinicians.

Setting/participants: Eligible participants recruited from three wards (cancer care and internal medicine) of an Australian tertiary metropolitan hospital. Participants included patients screened to have palliative care needs (using the SPICT^TM criteria), their carers and multidisciplinary clinicians (including clinical managers).

Results: Feasibility: A 71% response rate was achieved (n = 80 from 112 eligible patients approached). Mean screening time to inform eligible patients for PREM completion was 7.5 min. More than half of eligible participants (n = 47, 59%) opted for electronic completion of consideRATE and mean completion time was 6.12 min. A third of participants required assistance for PREM completion (n = 27, 34%). Score distribution varied across response options, albeit with a positive skew towards 'very good' and 'good'. Two thirds of respondents (n = 50, 62.5%) provided ⩾1 free-text response. Acceptability: Clinicians valued consideRATE data noting feedback needed to be: accessible, supported by free-text and responsive to local contexts.

Conclusions: It is feasible to implement consideRATE for inpatients with palliative care needs. Clinicians note consideRATE data is acceptable in informing improvement foci.