Background: Patient navigators are trained to help patients effectively access and use healthcare resources in order to facilitate timely completion of recommended cancer screening, diagnostic care, and treatment. Patient navigators provide logistic, instrumental, and psychosocial support to cancer patients. Yet few studies have examined patient-navigator relationships, particularly for Spanish-speaking patients with low English proficiency. We aimed to validate a Spanish version of the Patient Satisfaction with Interpersonal Relationship with Navigator (PSN-I-Sp) scale.
Methods: We translated and back-translated the PSN-I into Spanish and administered the resulting PSN-I-Sp to 222 Spanish-fluent participants. We conducted a principal components analysis and assessed Cronbach's coefficient alpha (α) to evaluate the latent structure and the internal consistency of the PSN-I-Sp. We also completed correlation analyses to examine divergence and convergence of the PSN-I-Sp with the Spanish version of the Patient Satisfaction with Cancer-Related Care (PSCC-Sp) and the patients' demographics.
Results: The principal components analysis revealed a one-dimensional PSN-I-Sp measure that explained 82.0% of the variance. The reliability assessment revealed high internal consistency (α = 0.97). The PSN-I-Sp demonstrated good face validity and adequate convergent and divergent characteristics as indicated by a moderate correlation with scores on the PSCC-Sp (all ps < 0.0001) and a non-statistically significant correlation with marital status (all p > 0.05).
Conclusion: The PSN-I-Sp is a valid and internally consistent measure of satisfaction with interpersonal relationship with a patient navigator for Spanish-speaking participants.
Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.