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A Patient-Health Care Provider Communication Scale
Elizabeth Scarbrough, Principal
Investigator
Funded by American
College of Rheumatology
Lawren H. Daltroy Fellowship in Patient-Clinician Communication
(7/2009-6/2010)
Abstract
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Elizabeth Scarbrough
(Ph.D. student) |
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Effective communication between patients and their
health care provider is imperative for improving both
the patients’ perception of the quality of the health
care they receive and their health outcomes (Tamblyn et
al., 2007; Franks et al., 1997). The role of
patient-health care provider communication in rheumatoid
arthritis (RA), a prevalent autoimmune disease seen in
rheumatology, is not well described in the literature
(American College of Rheumatology Subcommittee, 2002;
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007).
Research suggests that effective communication is
essential in order to develop a trusting relationship
between health care providers and patients and to
improve medication adherence (Berrios-Rivera et al.,
2006; Viller et al., 1999). There are a limited number
of self-report scales that measure patient-health care
provider communication, and there are significant
limitations in the measures currently in use (Berrios-Rivera
et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2006).
The purpose of this study is to develop a scale to
measure the patient’s perception of the quality of
patient-health care provider communication for use in
the RA population. Items will be developed using current
literature on patient-health care provider
communication, prior qualitative findings describing
aspects of patient-health care provider communication,
and the results of focus groups conducted with
individuals diagnosed with RA. The scale items will then
be evaluated by experts in the field to establish
content validity and piloted in 10 RA patients to
determine face validity. A cross-sectional design with
100 RA patients will be used to further determine the
psychometric properties of the scale. Cronbach’s alpha
will be computed to determine internal consistency.
Test-retest reliability will be used to determine the
stability of the measure. Factor analysis methods will
be used to determine the dimensionality of the scale.
Correlation of the scale with an additional self-report
measure will be used to further test the validity of the
scale.
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$7,000 -
American College of Rheumatology Fellowship
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