Making and Validation of an Instrument for Evaluating Knowledge of Medical Professionalism

Abstract

Objective: to construct and validate an instrument to explore cognitive resources related to medical professionalism. Material and methods: methodological and observational, longitudinal and prolective study. Piloting of 85 workers of the Family Medicine Unit (umf) no. 94 of the Mexican Social Security Institute (imss). A designed questionnaire based on four dimensions of professionalism: concepts, principles, characteristics and responsibilities. Validation of content and construct by experts in Family Medicine, education, ethics and research; reliability with piloting of 32 line-level physicians, 32 residents and 21 of the administrative staff. A statistical analysis with Kappa, Alfa of Cronbach test and difficulty and discrimination index. Results: the final version of the questionnaire consisted of 26 items, after the validity of construct and content, with a concordance of 0.5; reliability in line-level physicians was of 0.99; administrative staff of 0.60; index of difficulty with average of 0.46 and discrimination of 0.25. Conclusions: it was attained the construction of an instrument called: “Assessment of Knowledge on Medical Professionalism”, which determined validity of construct and content with a medium consistency, high reliability on line-level physicians and residents, as well as media in the administrative staff. Index of normal difficulty and slight discrimination.