Research Article
Melpomeni Koutsosimou, Konstan
Abstract
The objective was to assess the quality of the doctor-patient relationship, following a clinical consultation, through the development of a questionnaire that asks identical questions to doctors and patients. Therefore, a systematic search of the world literature in eight languages to include all available questionnaires measuring aspects of the doctor-patient relationship led to two separate comprehensive sets of questions, which were administered separately to doctor and patient pairs following clinical consultations. Principal component and factor analyses were performed to identify common factors in the doctor-patient relationship. On the basis of results and review of common questions in doctor and patient questionnaires, a questionnaire was constructed, with identical questions for doctors and patients. Concurrent validity was assessed through a 1-10 analogue scale and correlation between doctor and patient responses was studied. As an outcome, sets of 122 and 137 questions for doctors and patients respectively have been identified and administered to 461 doctor-patient pairs following clinical consultation. Principal component analyses revealed 24 factors for doctors and 31 factors for patients, accounting for 73.3 and 70.8% of variance respectively. A series of factor analyses showed that factors vary for patients, doctors and medical specialties. A final analysis including only common questions for doctors and patients led to a two-factor solution, resulting to a 16- item questionnaire. Together these findings suggest that the Doctor-Patient Relationship Assessment Questionnaire (DoPRAQ-16) has good psychometric properties, while common questions provide a common language, for measuring the doctor-patient relationship.