Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire: Common Questions

The SCQ is a powerful tool that's designed to routinely and rigorously measure compassion to identify challenges and allow for real-time solutions in clinical care.

Here are some commonly asked questions to help get you started.

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What’s so special about compassion anyways—why measure compassion in comparison to patient satisfaction or other care experience assessments?

Compassion is the pinnacle of caring and is the distinguishing factor between good care and great care. Satisfaction surveys are susceptible to ceiling effects and are not intended to or capable of measuring the patient experience (i.e. patients can be highly satisfied with the treatments they received while their experience of how these treatments were delivered and their interaction with their healthcare providers may have been lacking).

While compassion shares some similar attributes to empathy, sympathy and standard care, it optimizes these shared attributes while adding additional attributes that patients want and increasingly expect. In short, shoot for the stars and in order to do so, you’ll need accuracy and fidelity.

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How do I use and score the SCQ in research and practice?

The SCQ can be administered in paper or electronically after obtaining the appropriate license agreement. Ideally, since it is a patient reported experience measure, it should be self-reported and administered by an individual (research assistant, clinic manager, etc…) who is not a member of the patient’s care team, who may need to help some patients fill it out (visually impaired, etc…).  A scoring manual is available containing detailed instructions for research purposes and can be obtained by contacting the Compassion Research Lab directly.

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I’m a program leader, clinic manager, healthcare administrator, or systems leader that is interested in how aggregated data can be administered in a routine manner to improve care at a program or systems level?

Administering the SCQ across programs or institutions allows leaders to assess and compare patients experiences of compassion between units, clinics and/or hospitals within the overall organization or health system. This information can be used to inform benchmarks for compassion, to identify programs or services that require additional support, and provide patients and families with organizational and institutional compassion scores to help them decide where they would like to receive care.

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What was the thinking behind deciding to have patients provide feedback on their experience of compassion from a group of healthcare providers versus individual healthcare providers?

The decision to inquire about patients experiences of compassion experienced from their healthcare team versus individual healthcare providers was based on feedback from both subject matter experts, our patient advisory group and cognitive interviews with patients. Each of these groups felt that evaluating the care team as a whole was congruent with our study settings and that a single uncompassionate interchange within one healthcare provider outweighed the positive experiences of compassion from the larger team in patients overall experience of compassion.

The SCQ-Individual HCP and SCQ Discipline scales have been adapted from the SCQ to allow individual healthcare providers to assess their patients experience of compassion from them as an individual.  

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Licensing Questions

Here are some commonly asked questions to help you choose the right license for your needs.

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What is the difference between the ‘Gold Standard’ SCQ’s and the Adapted versions of the SCQ?

The SCQ and the SCQ Importance (SCQ-I) scale were developed and validated in a psychometrically rigorous fashion, in a multi-centred study, spanning all stages of measure development, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. They are therefore valid and reliable measures of patients experiences of compassion and perceived importance of compassion.

The adapted versions of the SCQ and SCQ-i have not undergone the same level of psychometric testing and therefore are measures that are based on a valid and reliable measure (SCQ) but require further validity testing.

Since the items of the SCQ are not context, time, patient, or disease specific we fully anticipate that the adapted versions of the SCQ will be determined to be valid and reliable measures through future studies by both the Compassion Research Lab and other researchers.

Are you allowed translate or modify the SCQ into another language or patient population?

The standard SCQ licenses do not permit any modifications to the SCQ (i.e. altering the wording of the questionnaire, translating into another language or patient population, adding/removing questions, etc...). It simply allows researchers and clinicians to use the existing versions of the SCQ which are available in multiple languages and have already been adapted in various patient populations.

In order to translate or adapt the SCQ to a particular language or care setting an additional research agreement between the researcher's institution and the University of Calgary's Tech Transfer department is required. The reason for this additional agreement is to protect the intellectual property associated with the SCQ and to maintain the fidelity of the measure.

If you would like to translate or adapt the SCQ please reach out to us directly (compassionresearchlab@gmail.com) and we will happily facilitate this--as we have already done so with hundreds of academic institutions and healthcare organizations around the world.

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When do I use the SCQ Importance Scale (SCQ-i)?

The SCQ importance (SCQ-i) scale allows researchers to determine what elements of components matter most to individual and groups of patients in comparison to their actual experiences of compassion, while also determining whether certain elements of compassion are more important in certain patient populations, culture groups, clinical contexts and disease stages than others.

Clinically the SCQ-i ideally should be administered as a baseline measure at the time of intake  at the time of admission into a healthcare facility. Doing so provides a personalized ‘snapshot’ or benchmark on how that specific individual optimally receives compassion which can inform the way compassion is delivered by healthcare providers at subsequent visits.

For some patients, ‘being treated like a person and not just a patient’ may be of secondary importance to ‘being attentive’ to their needs — as such the SCQ-i allows healthcare providers to tailor compassion to individual patient preferences.

What is the SCQ Short Form (SCQ-SF) and how is it intended to be used?

The SCQ short-form (SCQ-SF) is comprised of the highest loading items on each of the domains of the Patient Compassion Model. It provides clinical teams with additional flexibility without sacrificing psychometric rigour which can also be embedded in existing patient satisfaction surveys and patient experience measures.

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Who can administer the SCQ?

The SCQ  is a self-report measure that should be filled out by patients directly. The SCQ should be administered to patients by a Research Assistant or an individual who is not a member of their healthcare team.

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How frequently should the SCQ be administered?

The SCQ was developed using a 7-day recall period in order to assess patients experiences of compassion on a weekly basis, within care settings with extended lengths of stay such as long-term care, hospice, and acute care units with longer lengths of stay. For care settings and patient populations with smaller lengths of stay or patients who are being treated in an outpatient or clinic context we developed the SCQ-Short Stay Hospital; SCQ-Clinic and SCQ Outpatient Treatment scales.