Psychometric Properties Of Medical Professionals Resilience Scale (Mers) For Medical Doctors In Pakistan

Abstract

Background: Medical Professionals Resilience Scale (MeRS) is a four-point Likert scale for measuring resilience in the domains of control, resourcefulness, involvement, and growth. This 37-item inventory was previously validated among Malaysian health professionals. To increase the evidence of validity of MeRS, this study attempted to cross validate and perform psychometric analysis of MeRS among medical doctors of Pakistan. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in two different hospitals of Pakistan. Prior to the study, ethical approval was obtained from the ERC/IRB committee of SKBZAN/AK CMH Rawalakot. The MeRS was distributed to 201 medical doctors, comprising of 102 house officers and 99 medical officers. Data was analyzed for descriptive statistics, reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software version 26, and the Analysis of a Moment Structures software version 26 respectively. Results: The four-domain, 37-item MeRS has a good internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.90. The reliability of growth, control, involvement and resourceful domains are 0.76, 0.86, 0.79 and 0.79 having 15, 6, 12 and 4 items respectively. The confirmatory factor analysis yields the same four-domain with 14-items (3 each for growth and resourceful and 4 each for control and involvement) version as the best fit model for MeRS, with X2= 99.556, P-value=0.008, GFI=0.934, RMSEA=0.048, TLI=0953, CFI=0.965, NFI=0.899 and X2/df=1.464. Cross validation across two different hospitals for Pakistani doctors yields stable constructs of MeRS to measure resilience among medical doctors. Conclusion: This study concludes that MeRS is a valid and reliable tool for measurement of resilience in health professionals. The confirmatory factor analysis A performed on the original 37-item MeRS exhibited stable constructs. The new Modified MeRS Model with 14 items and same four domains showed high goodness of fit indices.