Quality of Communication Questionnaire for COPD patients receiving palliative care: translation and cross-cultural adaptation for use in Brazil

OBJECTIVE: To translate the Quality of Communication Questionnaire (QOC) to Portuguese and adapt it for use in Brazil in COPD patients receiving palliative care. METHODS: After approval from the first author of the original QOC and the local research ethics committee, the original, 13-item version of the questionnaire was independently translated to Brazilian Portuguese by two Brazilian translators fluent in English. The two translations were analyzed by a bilingual physician and the two Brazilian translators, who reached a consensus and produced another Portuguese version of the QOC. That version was back-translated to English by two translators originally from English-speaking countries and fluent in Portuguese. In order to resolve any discrepancies, an expert panel compared the original version of the QOC with all five versions produced up to that point, the “prefinal” version of the QOC for use in Brazil being thus arrived at. A total of 32 patients admitted to any of three public hospital ICUs in the greater metropolitan area of Florianopolis, in southern Brazil, participated in the pretesting phase of the study, which was aimed at assessing the clarity and cultural acceptability of the prefinal version of the QOC for use in Brazil. RESULTS: Mean patient age was 48.5 ± 18.8 years. Most of the items were well understood and accepted, being rated 8 or higher. One item, regarding death, was considered difficult to understand by the participants in the pretesting phase. After analyzing the back-translated version of the QOC, the first author of the original questionnaire requested that the items “Caring about you as a human being” and “Talking about what death might be like” be changed to “Caring about you as a person” and “Talking about how dying might be”, respectively. The final version of the QOC for use in Brazil was thus arrived at. CONCLUSIONS: The QOC was successfully translated to Portuguese and adapted for use in Brazil.