Objective: Patient-centered care is a concept recently implemented in French hospitals. No tools have been developing to measure patient-centeredness perceived by professional. The aim of the project was to develop and to validate a self-measure scale for healthcare providers.
Methods: The project has been conducting from June 2010 to June 2011. A multispecialty working group defined the conceptual framework (brainstorming, formalized consensus method), then built the questionnaire. After the pretest, the tool consisted in 44 items experimented in 35 shifts of 28 organizations. Exploratory and confirmatory psychometric properties were then tested (Principal component analysis, Cronbach' α coefficients, Structural equation modeling).
Results: Professional participation rate was 55%. The final solution produced a 16 items questionnaire and 3 dimensions (41,6% of the explained variance): Respect (5 items), Organisation (6 items), Patient and family information (5 items). Cronbach α coefficients were respectively 0,68, 0,83 and 0,68.
Conclusion: This first patient-centered care scale developed in the French context had good psychometric properties. The questionnaire will be tested another time next year in order to comfort our results and to explore jointly the patient perceptions of patient-centered care.