The perspective of patients is increasingly recognised as important to care improvement and innovation. Patient questionnaires such as patient-reported outcome measures may often require cross-cultural adaptation (CCA) to gather their intended information most effectively when used in cultures and languages different to those in which they were developed. The use of CCA could be seen as a practical step in addressing the known problems of inclusion, diversity and access in medical research.

An example of the recent adaptation of a patient-reported outcome measure for use with ED patients is used to explore some key features of CCA, introduce the importance of CCA to emergency care practitioners and highlight the limitations of CCA.