Construction and preliminary evaluation of the inpatient glycemic control questionnaire (IGCQ): a survey tool assessing perceptions and knowledge of resident physicians

Abstract

Background Uncontrolled hyperglycemia in hospitalized patients, with or without diabetes mellitus, is associated with many adverse outcomes. Resident physicians are the primary managers of inpatient glycemic control (IGC) in many academic and community medical centers; however, no validated survey tools related to their perceptions and knowledge of IGC are currently available. As identification of common barriers to successful IGC amongst resident physicians may help foster better educational interventions (ultimately leading to improvements in IGC and patient care), we sought to construct and preliminarily evaluate such a survey tool. Methods We developed the IGC questionnaire (IGCQ) by using previously published but unvalidated survey tools related to physician perspectives on inpatient glycemic control as a framework. We administered the IGCQ to a cohort of resident physicians from the University of Mississippi Medical Center, University of Louisville, Emory University, and the University of Virginia. We then used classical test theory and Rasch Partial Credit Model analyses to preliminarily evaluate and revise the IGCQ. The final survey tool contains 16 total items and three answer-choice categories for most items. Results Two hundred forty-six of 438 (56.2%) eligible resident physicians completed the IGCQ during various phases of development. Conclusions We constructed and preliminarily evaluated the IGCQ, a survey tool that may be useful for future research into resident physician perceptions and knowledge of IGC. Future studies could seek to externally validate the IGCQ and then utilize the survey tool in pre- and post-intervention assessments. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1657-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A Multicenter Study Evaluating Perceptions and Knowledge of Inpatient Glycemic Control Among Resident Physicians: Analyzing Themes to Inform and Improve Care

“…In summary, herein we presented the largest evaluation of resident physician perceptions and knowledge of IGC currently published in the medical literature. This project was also the first to preliminarily evaluate a survey tool that can be utilized in future research (33). Most respondents reported feeling comfortable managing inpatient hyperglycemia but had difficulty identifying appropriate IGC target values.…”

“…We previously published a detailed description of the methods utilized to construct and preliminarily evaluate the IGCQ (33) (Fig. 1).…”

“…Differences were considered significant at P<.05. Based on results of prior survey evaluation, we categorized the IGCQ into two subscales, a "comfort with managing IGC" scale (IGCQ Questions 2-6) and a "barriers to IGC" scale (IGCQ Questions 11-15) (33). We compared associations between knowledge (as measured by IGCQ Questions 7-10) and PGY with total scores from the "comfort with managing IGC" subscale using a Kruskal-Wallis test.…”

Clinical decision support to improve management of diabetes and dysglycemia in the hospital: a path to optimizing practice and outcomes

“…Furthermore, many practice barriers exist among multiple providers from different disciplines and levels of training. These obstacles seem to prevail despite advocacy for improvement of clinical practices and health systems 6–17. These are recognized deficiencies in practice performance and healthcare delivery in the inpatient setting and transitions of care 5 13–15 18.…”