The Vietnamese Version of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire and the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire: Translation and Cross-cultural Adaptation

Evaluation of routine practices of dispensing pattern among community pharmacists in Can Tho city, Vietnam: A cross-sectional simulated patient approach

Background

Drugstores are preferred patients' channels of contact when getting minor ailments. Given the hike in both the prevalence and severity of influenza and acute childhood diarrhea, the role, and performances of pharmacy staff should be examined.

Design and methods

A team of pharmacy students was voluntarily recruited and trained to play the role of simulated customer visiting 228 chosen community pharmacies in six districts in Can Tho city. This process is conducted from 2021 to 2022.

Results

The study reveals detailed information about symptoms is the most common inquiry (99.2% in scenario 1). The consulting quality is poor, 85% of instances recorded to have no medical guidelines for influenza circumstances. Meanwhile, nearly four-fifths of pharmacists provide instructions on dosage intake. It is also found that length of services is statistically different between influenza and watery diarrhea (p < 0.05, CI = 95%).

Conclusions

Clinical practices of community pharmacists, overall, are disappointing and far below expectations.

A cross-cultural comparison of a measure of parent perceptions among families of children with autism in Vietnam

LAY ABSTRACT

Raising an autistic child can affect many aspects of families' lives. Parents are responsible for many decisions, from initiating evaluation to selecting and implementing treatments. How parents conceptualize the course and nature of their child's diagnosis influences these processes and parents' own well-being. Parents' perceptions about their children's autism are also affected by cultural contexts and understanding of autism. The Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised (IPQ-R) is widely used to study cognitions in chronic health research and has been adapted and validated to measure parents' perceptions and beliefs about their children's ASD (IPQ-R-ASD). However, such studies are mostly conducted in high-income countries (HICs) with western, individualistic cultural values (e.g. United States, Canada). Therefore, it is unclear whether the IPQ-R-ASD is a useful instrument in understanding parents' perceptions of autism in Vietnam, a lower- and middle-income country (LMIC) with collectivistic Asian cultural values. These differences suggest that parents in Vietnam may have cognitive representations of their children's autism that differ from those of parents living in HIC, western countries. The purpose of this study was to examine the usability of the translated Vietnamese IPQ-R-ASD that may, ultimately, help explore Vietnamese parents' autism perceptions. While the study's result indicated the usability of the translated measure in Vietnam, when interpreted with Vietnamese norms, results also highlighted notable differences between Vietnamese and North American parents' perceptions of autism that warrant further research.

Psychometric Testing of the Bahasa Version of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire among Indonesians with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

The Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (B-IPQ) has been recommended to validate illness perception. Nevertheless, this measurement has yet to be validated with an assessment of the construct and convergent validities and reliability in Indonesia. Our study aimed to psychometrically test the 8-item B-IPQ among Indonesians with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Data included 294 patients with T2DM with stratified multistage clustering. The 36-item Short Form Survey, 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, and fasting blood glucose (FBG) were used to examine convergence and divergence. The validity analysis included the construct and convergent validities with significant person correlations. Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE) were used to assess reliability. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses indicated a multidimensional structure, including cognitive with a five-item structure and emotional illness representation with a three-item structure, with an acceptable goodness of model fit. The tool revealed good internal consistency for the cognitive, emotional, and overall domains and was positively moderately correlated with FBG, stress, anxiety, and depression but negatively correlated with the overall quality of life and mental and physical component scores. Findings provide empirical evidence that the Bahasa version of the B-IPQ showed adequate internal consistency, exploratory and confirmatory, and thus is valid and reliable for illness perception assessments among Indonesians with T2DM.