Tim Scott is a senior lecturer in organization at the University of St. Andrews School of Management. His publications include articles on a range of topics, including improving communication with people with cancer and heart disease, organizational culture, health information technology, and ethnography. He has published books on health care performance and organizational culture, and on implementing new information technology in Kaiser Permanente. His current book, advocating a poststructural revision of organization studies, is forthcoming.Davies is a professor of health care policy and management at the University of St. Andrews School of Management. His research interests include public service delivery encompassing evidence-based policy and practice, performance measurement and management, accountability, governance and trust. He also has a particular interest in the role of organizational culture and organizational learning in the delivery of high quality services, and in developing greater understanding of the working relationships between service professionals and service managers. Diane Whalley is a research fellow in the National Primary Care Research and DevelopmentCentre at the University of Manchester. Her main areas of interest include the psychological aspects of recruitment and retention in the primary care workforce, and the design and psychometric evaluation of measurement tools in health care.

BackgroundPatient empowerment is viewed by policy makers and health care practitioners as a mechanism to help patients with long-term conditions better manage their health and achieve better outcomes. However, assessing the role of empowerment is dependent on effective measures of empowerment. Although many measures of empowerment exist, no measure has been developed specifically for patients with long-term conditions in the primary care setting. This study presents preliminary data on the development and validation of such a measure.MethodsWe conducted two empirical studies. Study one was an interview study to understand empowerment from the perspective of patients living with long-term conditions. Qualitative analysis identified dimensions of empowerment, and the qualitative data were used to generate items relating to these dimensions. Study two was a cross-sectional postal study involving patients with different types of long-term conditions recruited from general practices. The survey was conducted to test and validate our new measure of empowerment. Factor analysis and regression were performed to test scale structure, internal consistency and construct validity.ResultsSixteen predominately elderly patients with different types of long-term conditions described empowerment in terms of 5 dimensions (identity, knowledge and understanding, personal control, personal decision-making, and enabling other patients). One hundred and ninety seven survey responses were received from mainly older white females, with relatively low levels of formal education, with the majority retired from paid work. Almost half of the sample reported cardiovascular, joint or diabetes long-term conditions. Factor analysis identified a three factor solution (positive attitude and sense of control, knowledge and confidence in decision making and enabling others), although the structure lacked clarity. A total empowerment score across all items showed acceptable levels of internal consistency and relationships with other measures were generally supportive of its construct validity.ConclusionInitial analyses suggest that the new empowerment measure meets basic psychometric criteria. Reasons concerning the failure to confirm the hypothesized factor structure are discussed alongside further developments of the scale.

No abstract

PURPOSEThe consultation is fundamental to the delivery of primary care, but different ways of organizing consultations may lead to different patient experiences in terms of access, continuity, technical quality of care, and communication. Patients' priorities for these different issues need to be understood, but the optimal methods for assessing priorities are unclear. This study used a discrete choice experiment to assess patients' priorities. METHODSWe surveyed patients from 6 family practices in England. The patients chose between primary care consultations differing in attributes such as ease of access (wait for an appointment), choice (fl exibility of appointment times), continuity (physician's knowledge of the patient), technical quality (thoroughness of physical examination), and multiple aspects of patient-centered care (interest in patient's ideas, inquiry about patient's social and emotional well-being, and involvement of patient in decision making). We used probit models to assess the relative priority patients placed on different attributes and to estimate how much they were willing to pay for them. RESULTSAnalyses were based on responses from 1,193 patients (a 53% response rate). Overall, patients were willing to pay the most for a thorough physical examination ($40.87). The next most valued attributes of care were seeing a physician who knew them well ($12.18), seeing a physician with a friendly manner ($8.50), having a reduction in waiting time of 1 day ($7.22), and having fl exibility of appointment times ($6.71). Patients placed similar value on the different aspects of patient-centered care ($12.06-$14.82). Responses were infl uenced by the scenario in which the decision was made (minor physical problem vs urgent physical problem vs ambiguous physical or psychological problem) and by patients' demographic characteristics.CONCLUSIONS Although patient-centered care is important to patients, they may place higher priority on the technical quality of care and continuity of care. Discrete choice experiments may be a useful method for assessing patients' priorities in health care.

Background: Patient reported outcome measures used in studies of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) have been found to be inadequate for determining the impact of the disease from the patient's perspective. Objective: To produce the PsAQoL, a PsA-specific quality of life (QoL) instrument, employing the needs based model of QoL that would be relevant and acceptable to respondents, valid, and reliable. Methods: Content was derived from qualitative interviews conducted with patients with PsA. Face and content validity were assessed by field test interviews with a new sample of patients with PsA. A postal survey was conducted to improve the scaling properties of the new measure. Finally, a test-retest postal survey was used to identify the final measure and to test its scaling properties, reliability, internal consistency, and validity. Results: Analysis of the qualitative interview transcripts identified a 51 item questionnaire. Field test interviews confirmed the acceptability and relevance of the measure. Analysis of data from the first postal survey (n = 94) reduced the questionnaire to 35 items. Rasch analysis of data from the test-retest survey (n = 286) identified a 20 item version of the PsAQoL with good item fit. This version had excellent internal consistency (a = 0.91), test-retest reliability (0.89), and validity. Conclusions: The PsAQoL is a valuable tool for assessing the impact of interventions for PsA in clinical studies and trials. It is well accepted by patients, taking about three minutes to complete, is easy to administer, and has excellent scaling and psychometric properties.