Physician and patient perceptions of cultural competency and medical compliance

To examine the relationship between the different perceptions of medical teams and their patients of the cultural competence of physicians, and the influence of this relationship on the conflict between them. Physicians' cultural competence (Noble A. Linguistic and cultural mediation of social services. Cultural competence of health care. Echo New Studio 2007; 91:18-28) might reduce this phenomenon. Structured questionnaires were distributed to 90 physicians working in outpatient clinics in a central hospital in Israel, and to 417 of their patients. Each physician had four to six sampled patients.The findings showed a significant negative correlation (r = -0.50, P < 0.05) between the physicians' perception of their cultural competence and the patients' perception of physician competence. The more patients perceive the physician as culturally competent, the more they comply with their medical recommendations. In addition, the findings show that ethnicity significantly affects patients' perception of the cultural competence of physicians, and their satisfaction with the medical care they receive.

The development and psychometric evaluation of a safety climate measure for primary care

INTRODUCTION

Building a safety culture is an important part of improving patient care. Measuring perceptions of safety climate among healthcare teams and organisations is a key element of this process. Existing measurement instruments are largely developed for secondary care settings in North America and many lack adequate psychometric testing. Our aim was to develop and test an instrument to measure perceptions of safety climate among primary care teams in National Health Service for Scotland.

METHOD

Questionnaire development was facilitated through a steering group, literature review, semistructured interviews with primary care team members, a modified Delphi and completion of a content validity index by experts. A cross-sectional postal survey utilising the questionnaire was undertaken in a random sample of west of Scotland general practices to facilitate psychometric evaluation. Statistical methods, including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and Cronbach and Raykov reliability coefficients were conducted.

RESULTS

Of the 667 primary care team members based in 49 general practices surveyed, 563 returned completed questionnaires (84.4%). Psychometric evaluation resulted in the development of a 30-item questionnaire with five safety climate factors: leadership, teamwork, communication, workload and safety systems. Retained items have strong factor loadings to only one factor. Reliability coefficients was satisfactory (α = 0.94 and ρ = 0.93).

DISCUSSION

This study is the first stage in the development of an appropriately valid and reliable safety climate measure for primary care. Measuring safety climate perceptions has the potential to help primary care organisations and teams focus attention on safety-related issues and target improvement through educational interventions. Further research is required to explore acceptability and feasibility issues for primary care teams and the potential for organisational benchmarking.