Development and Testing of the Person-Centered Environment and Care Assessment Tool (PCECAT)

Objective: While person-centered principles provide an ideal foundation for developing service standards in residential aged and dementia care, there has been limited attention to developing tools which can measure service structures, processes and outcomes according to these principles. The Person-Centered Environment and Care Assessment Tool (PCECAT) was developed to assess and improve residential aged-care standards using person-centered principles, while also adhering to the Australian residential aged-care standards.Methods: A mixed-methods approach was used to develop and validate the PCECAT in five sequential stages.Results: Content, face, concurrent, and convergent validity were established and test-retest reliability was confirmed in 334 aged/dementia care units belonging to 131 Australian and New Zealand aged-care homes.Conclusions: The PCECAT and its Guidelines have helped providers to improve service quality. While Australian residential aged-care standards were used as guidelines in developing the scale, there is potential for PCECAT adaptation in other countries and cultures.