Psychometric properties of the Attitudes towards Medical Communication Scale in nursing students.

BACKGROUND: Adequate communication skills in healthcare professionals are one of the key elements required for achieving high-quality healthcare. Thus, measurement instruments able to assess the dimensions related to these skills, including attitudes towards communication, are useful and convenient...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Authors: Escribano S; Juliá-Sanchis R; García-Sanjuán S; Congost-Maestre N; Cabañero-Martínez MJ
Format: Article
Status:Published version
Publication date:2021
Country:España
Institution:Instituto de Investigación Biomédica y Sanitaria de Alicante (ISABIAL)
Repository:r-ISABIAL. Repositorio Institucional de Producción Científica del Instituto de Investigación Biomédica y Sanitaria de Alicante
OAI Identifier:oai:isabial.fundanetsuite.com:p8805
Online Access:https://isabial.portalinvestigacion.com/publicaciones8805
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8162233/
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Attitudes
Evidence-base practice
Health communication
Nursing students
Psychometrics
Description
Summary:BACKGROUND: Adequate communication skills in healthcare professionals are one of the key elements required for achieving high-quality healthcare. Thus, measurement instruments able to assess the dimensions related to these skills, including attitudes towards communication, are useful and convenient tools. OBJECTIVES: To (a) cross-culturally adapt and validate a scale to measure attitudes towards communication in a sample of nursing students in the Spanish environment; (b) describe the perceived attitudes of nursing degree students towards communication. METHODS: We conducted an instrumental study. First, we adapted the scale by applying a standardised linguistic validation procedure. After that, we determined its structural equivalence and evaluated its psychometric properties. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 255 students participated; their average age was 22.66 years (SD = 4.75) and 82% were female. RESULTS: The internal consistency of the scale was adequate (0.75), and the data fit well with the model (CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.99; RMSEA = .01 95% CI [.00-.05]). The overall instrument score poorly correlated with the self-efficacy in communication skills variable. CONCLUSIONS: The attitudes towards communication scores for these nursing students were high. The Spanish version of the Attitudes Towards Health Communication scale had adequate psychometric properties and this tool could quickly and easily be applied to assess the attitudes of health profession students.