Assessment of Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes in the Use of Information Technology to Support Hospital Pharmacists Clinical Practice: Development and Validation of a Questionnaire

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to describe the steps to construct and validate a questionnaire to identify the knowledge, skills and attitudes of hospital pharmacists in the use of information technology and electronic tools to support clinical practice. Methods: The electronic questionnaire with 26 items, 8 dimensions and 74 variables was constructed based on a bibliographical review and validated by a experts panel (n=10), who evaluated in two cycles the relevance and clarity of each question by using scale (relevance: 1-irrelevant, 2-somewhat relevant, 3-relevant and 4-very relevant and Clarity: 1-not clear, 2-somewhat clear, 3-clear and 4-very clear). The Content Validity Index and the degree of agreement were calculated. The questionnaire was tested with hospital pharmacists, adjusted and used in definitive data collection in Brazil. Results: The 1 st cycle Content Validity Index-CVI was 0.9635±0.0566 and 1 in the 2 nd cycle. The questions with CVI<0.8 were adjusted. The degree of agreement was 82.5%(1 st cycle) and 99.61%(2 nd cycle). The validated questionnaire was submitted to the receptivity test with a rate of 4.67 responses per day. After the changes suggested the questionnaire was applied to Brazilian hospital pharmacists (n=1373) obtaining a response rate of 25.3% (n=348). Conclusion: The validated questionnaire presents acceptable content validity psychometric measures and may reveal the hospital pharmacists' gaps in knowledge, skills and attitudes in the use of information technology and electronic tools.