Zhongguo quanke yixue (Feb 2023)
Development, Reliability and Validity of the General Practitioner Competency Rating Scale for Assessing General Practitioners' Competencies in Delivering Contracted Healthcare Services
Abstract
Background The competencies of general practitioners (GPs) have become a basis for promoting the implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment, and effective supply of primary healthcare services against the backdrop of the initiation and implementation of contracted services provided by GPs in primary care in China. The regular competency-based assessment systems with clear objectives and strong operability can positively stimulate GPs to provide contracted services with higher quality and efficiency. Objective To develop a competency rating scale for GPs, providing a tool applicable to scientific evaluation of GPs' competencies in China. Methods By use of a GP competency model, and review results of relevant studies and competency scales, the measurement items and the draft of the scale were developed, then were revised according to the results of a questionnaire survey conducted with GPs in primary care in major provincial administrative regions from April to August 2021. Among the 402 responders, the answers of 201 cases (sample A) were used for exploratory factor analysis, and those of the other 210 cases (sample B) were used for confirmatory factor analysis. Based on this, the reliability and validity of the final scale were tested. Results The final General Practitioner Competency Rating Scale includes four dimensions (general service competency, humanistic competency during practice, teamwork and cooperation competency, learning and development competency) and 21 items. The Cronbach's α for the scale, and the afore-mentioned four dimensions was 0.929, 0.877, 0.850, 0.812, and 0.811, respectively. The P-value of Bartlett's test of sphericity was less than 0.001 (approximate χ2=2 319.759, P<0.001) , reaching a significant standard, and the KMO value (0.923) was close to 1.0. By exploratory factor analysis, four common factors were extracted, explaining 67.680% of the total variance. The first-order confirmatory factor analysis showed that the correlation coefficients of the four dimensions were between 0.68 and 0.72, and highly correlated. The second-order confirmatory factor analysis results were: χ2/df=1.312, RMSEA=0.039, CFI=0.976, GFI=0.913, NFI=0.907. Conclusion Our scale has proven to have good reliability and validity, which may be used for assessing the competencies of GPs delivering contracted services in China.
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