Design and validation of the ACPAPS questionnaire to assess person-centred care by the family doctor

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Design, construction and validation of a self-completion test that allows the Family Physician (FP) to assess the extent to which he/she integrates person-centred care (PCC) in his/her clinical practice. DESIGN: Qualitative. Questionnaire design. LOCATION: Primary care. PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred and fourteen family and community medicine physicians and residents, from 62 of the 80 health centres in the autonomous community of Murcia (Spain). METHODS: Construction of a questionnaire from a bank of 873 items from a systematic review and a Delphi study. Review by PCC panel of experts (8). Cognitive pretest with 10 FP. Doctors from 62 health centres were invited to participate. With the responses we measured reliability, validity and feasibility. RESULTS: The final questionnaire contains 37 items. We measured reliability through internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha of .915. For construct validity, the appropriate Bartlett's test of sphericity and the Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin measure of .889 allowed us to carry out a factor analysis with the extraction of nine factors (Kaiser's rule) with five main factors (Scree test) whose items coincide with the dimensions proposed by the experts. To assess its feasibility we considered the response rate of 31.15%, the response time of 17minutes 23seconds and only .9% of respondents considered the questionnaire long or complex. CONCLUSIONS: The ACPAPS questionnaire is a reliable, valid and feasible tool to assess PCC in FM, which has multiple and far-reaching applications.