Development and validation of a comprehensive needs assessment tool to assess the burden of cancer chemotherapy patients attending a tertiary care hospital

Introduction: In India in 2020, there were an estimated 1.39 million cancers present in the country. Chemotherapy patients experience several problems such as ADRs (adverse drug reactions), and because of this, many dropouts have been happening. Also, there is a lack of communication between the patient and care providers (doctors).

Objectives: Development and validation of a comprehensive needs assessment tool to assess the burden of chemotherapy on patients attending tertiary level health care facilities.

Materials and methods: Development and validation of comprehensive needs assessment in cancer chemotherapy involve several steps, including problem statement and literature review regarding the problem, domain generation, development of the preliminary questionnaire, face validation, statistical validation, and final draft of the tool.

Results: A total of 10 experts are involved in face validation. The majority (80%) of the experts agreed with the grammar, clarity, and content of the tool. A few experts (20%) disagreed regarding the construction of the questionnaire, the appropriate level of understanding for the participants, and the content of the tool and suggested changes in the physical and psychological domains. The questionnaire has been re-structured according to the expert's suggestion before going for statistical validation. Internal consistency of the CNAT-CC was optimal, with a satisfactory Cronbach's alpha of 0.7 for the total scale.

Discussion: The current study was focused on the development and validation of needs assessment in cancer chemotherapy patients. The CNAT-CC promises to be a comprehensive needs assessment tool that applies to a comparatively vast majority of patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy.