“I was able to talk about what was on my mind’. The operationalisation of person centred care
What we know already. Specialist spiritual care can be broken down into discrete items within a questionnaire when grounded in the theory developed in the previous paper. However, in order to test whether this project is meaningful the resultant Lothian PROM needs to be validated in a patient population. What this paper adds. This paper describes the validation of the Lothian PROM in a sample of patients. It shows the pattern of responses given to the questions and analyses the correlations between them. This type of analysis can illuminate connections between the type of person responding and the types of responses they give. This analysis shows that everyone may benefit from specialist spiritual care. Why this is important. In order to ascertain whether this measure of specialist spiritual care is valid certain standard procedures need to be followed. This paper describes those procedures. Therefore, the finding that everyone can benefit from specialist spiritual care is grounded in robust measurement techniques. How this impacts upon chaplaincy. A valid PROM is a powerful tool in terms of providing robust evidence for the efficacy of chaplaincy interventions. That this entire sample benefitted from chaplaincy intervention has significant consequences for the profession. Chaplaincy benefits all, not just the faithful, religious or spiritual.