Introduction Patient identified need is key to delivering a person-centred approach in supportive and palliative care. The support needs approach for patients (SNAP) tool aims to enable patients with advanced COPD to identify and express their support needs to healthcare professionals (HCPs) but its validity is unknown.

Aim To establish the face content and criterion validity of the SNAP tool in advanced COPD.

Methods Two-stage mixed method primary care study involving patients with advanced COPD and their carers. Stage 1: Face and content validity assessed though focus groups involving patients and carers (n=12) considering appropriateness relevance and completeness of the SNAP tool. Thematic data analysis within a Framework Approach. Stage 2: Content and criterion validity assessed in a postal survey through patient self-completion of the SNAP tool and disease impact measures (chronic respiratory questionnaire COPD assessment test and hospital anxiety and depression scale). Content validity assessed using summary statistics; criterion validity via correlations between tool items and impact measures.

Results The SNAP tool has good face content and criterion validity. Patients and carers found the tool patient-friendly with potential clinical utility. No tool items were redundant. Clear correlations were found between tool items and the majority of items/sub-scales of the impact measures.

Discussion The SNAP tool has good face content and criterion validity. It has the potential to support the delivery of supportive and palliative care in advanced COPD by enabling patients to identify and express their support needs to HCPs. Future work will pilot SNAP in clinical practice.