An attitude scale for general practitionners and dispensing chemists who encourage therapeutic compliance

Aims: To construct and validate a scale of professional attitudes for both general practitioners (APMG) and dispensing chemists (APPO). Methods: Stage 1. The construction and qualitative validation of a scale. By interviewing 40 patients in a preventive-care center in Lorraine in addition to 21 general practitioners (MG) and 22 dispensing chemists (PO), we targeted items which could possibly help us formalize a theoretical construction of professional attitudes which intervened in the instauration and follow-up of patient treatments. Then, with the help of a group of experts, we determined which generic items in the questionnaire could be validated and, finally, identified the functions which fulfilled these attitudes. Stage 2. We statistically validated the APMG and APPO scales and then studied the metric characteristics of the scales by using a questionnaire which was auto-administered to 393 patients in Lorraine. Results: We isolated 15 relational attitudes associated with information, communication and education in general practitioners and nine in dispensing chemists. The APMG and APPO scales form two, one-dimensional scales. Analysis showed high internal coherence (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.91 and 0.87 respectively) and acceptable reproducibility (the correlation coefficient between classes was respectively 0.74 and 0.72). Conclusion: The competencies we isolated represent important criteria in the quality of interpersonal doctor-patient and chemist-patient relationships. The metric characteristics of the scales (APMG: 15 items and APPO: 9 items) were deemed satisfactory. This suggests that they can be used as an aid in training in the healthcare professional-patient relationship, in decision-making and in assessing relational competencies.