Development and validation of the RQC: a daily contact log for ACT and ICM teams.

Aim: Instruments to measure the process--the daily activities of home care workers--have received little attention and may impede research in refining the active ingredients, the clientele best served and continuous quality improvement. We developed a decade ago in Quebec, Canada, a new daily contact log (relevé quotidien des contacts or RQC) that has now reached in practice 1 million entries.

Methods: Three features distinguish the RQC development, namely, practical ergonomics, a clear logic, and response categories easy to understand and retain. The instrument is filled following any 10-minute or more contact with or about the client, and covers the location, time and actors of the episode of care, and the nature of the intervention (crisis, representing, accompanying, discussing) in 10 areas (i.e. medication, daily living activities, housing, relationships, substance abuse, legal, etc.). Inter-rater agreement for each RQC response category and rater agreement with a criterion measure (coded vignettes) were evaluated.

Results: Kappa coefficients and intra-class correlation coefficients yielded results ranging from at least moderate to generally substantial agreement for all 77 response categories.

Conclusions: The new RQC may support international studies of the implementation and application of various forms of intensive home care, refining its indications, and serves as a clinical and managerial tool to ensure quality of the interventions.