Questionnaire for determining physicians’ attitude change after Triage & Action minor emergency course

Abstract

Background: The Triage & Action (T&A) minor emergency course was developed to improve clinical skills for minor emergent problems of Japanese non-specialists. Currently, the course quality is evaluated only by self-reported degree of satisfaction. This study aimed to describe a newly developed questionnaire to evaluate the change in attitude toward clinical practice after completing a T&A minor emergency course and to evaluate its validity and reliability. Methods: The questionnaire was prepared, and the content and contextual validity of the aforementioned course were validated by a clinical sensibility test. Reliability was assessed by the interclass correlation coefficient after 2 weeks via a follow-up questionnaire. McNemar’s test for categorical variables or the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for continuous variables was used for sensitivity analysis, with a statistical significance level of p < 0.05. Results: Among 103 evaluators receiving the questionnaires, 44 (42.7%) responded to the questionnaire, 36 (40.8%) to the follow-up questionnaire, and 33 (32.0%) to both questionnaires; 28 (27.2%) participants took the clinical sensibility test. Seven questions on the reliability test showed fair agreement, and there were no significant differences in the answers to the sensibility test questions. In the clinical sensibility test, 82.1% of the physicians answered “Fair to large extent” to the question about perspicuity, whereas 92.8% answered “Normal to very likely” to the question “To elicit the participants’ attitude.” Conclusion: The new questionnaire was shown to be contextually well validated and reliable.