Clinical Research Directory

Development and Validation of the Paediatric Scale for Quality of Recovery in the Post-Anaesthesia Care Unit

This project aims to develop and test a new questionnaire to measure how well children recover in the post-anaesthesia care unit (PACU). Currently, children in PACU are mainly assessed using discharge readiness criteria, but these do not fully capture the child's recovery experience or overall wellbeing. Participants will be children aged 2-17 years having elective procedures requiring anaesthesia or sedation, and their parents/caregivers where proxy reporting is needed for younger children. The study will be conducted in stages, including interviews to identify important aspects of recovery, expert review of draft questions, testing of question clarity and acceptability, and field testing of the questionnaire in PACU at planned time points during recovery. Clinical information routinely collected as part of care, such as pain scores, nausea vomiting, airway or oxygen events, and length of stay in PACU, will also be examined to assess how well the questionnaire performs. The expected outcome is a child-centred, practical, and reliable PACU recovery measure that can be used in clinical care, quality improvement, and future research.

Thai Version of the Pediatric Quality of Recovery Score (PedSQoR): Translation and Psychometric Validation Study

Postoperative recovery in children is a complex, multidimensional process that differs substantially from recovery in adults, encompassing physical comfort, emotional well-being, behavioral changes, and psychosocial functioning. While several validated Quality of Recovery (QoR) instruments are widely used in adult perioperative care, equivalent tools for pediatric populations remain limited, particularly in non-English-speaking settings. The Pediatric Quality of Recovery score (PedSQoR) was recently developed to address this gap by providing a comprehensive, patient- and proxy-reported outcome measure specifically designed for children. However, a culturally adapted and psychometrically validated Thai version of this instrument is currently unavailable. The primary objective of this study is to translate and culturally adapt the PedSQoR into Thai in accordance with the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) guidelines for patient-reported outcome measures. The secondary objective is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Thai-PedSQoR, including content validity, construct validity, reliability, and responsiveness, in Thai pediatric surgical patients. This clinical applied research will be conducted at Siriraj Hospital and will include children aged 2-17 years undergoing elective surgery or procedures requiring anesthesia. The translation process will involve forward and backward translation, expert committee review, and cognitive debriefing with parents and children to ensure conceptual equivalence and cultural appropriateness. Psychometric validation will be performed in a cohort of 130 participants, stratified into proxy-report and self-report groups according to age. The Thai-PedSQoR will be administered on postoperative days 2, 6, and 21, alongside anchor measures including pain and global recovery visual analog scales. The expected outcome of this study is a reliable and valid Thai version of the PedSQoR that can be used in clinical practice, quality improvement initiatives, and future pediatric perioperative research, supporting patient-centered and value-based pediatric surgical care in Thailand.