DEVELOPMENT OF A MEASURE OF PATIENTS’ PERCEPTION OF CULTURAL SENSITIVITY OF THEIRHEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Objective. To develop an instrument that can be administered to HIV positive patients of Caribbean Descent to measure their providers’ cultural sensitivity. Background. It has become necessary for all health care providers to be increasingly culturally sensitive because of the growth of ethnic minority populations in the United States. A recurring theme amongst HIV/AIDS patients of Caribbean descent is the lack of cultural sensitivity of their providers. This insensitivity encourages them to be non adherent to their therapy and health care. Methods. A search of electronic databases was performed in October 2013. Results were limited to articles that were in English published between 2000 and 2013. Articles were collected and reviewed based on suitability for the research problem. Only those studies with instrumentation/measurements/interventions for cultural sensitivity reported by patients were extracted. A geographic limit was imposed to gather only those studies that were conducted in the United States. An initial search returned 116 articles of which only 3 were relevant to our objective. These final 3 articles specifically investigated patient reported cultural sensitivity. However, all the studies had different conceptualizations for cultural sensitivity. For this instrument, the concept involves two dimensions/scales: discrimination (Provider Discrimination scale) and acceptance of a patient’s cultural beliefs and values (Provider Acceptance of Culture scale). These scales were subjected to five phases of expert/judges ratings. Judges were physicians, statisticians, clinicians, researchers, professors, graduate students (Pharm. D & Ph.D.) and HIV specialists. Their practice settings included hospitals, universities and private consultancy groups throughout different areas of the United States. After each round of judging, suggestions were made for improvement and the scales were refined. This measure is currently being pilot tested. It will be subjected to initial reliability and validity tests. Results. Items were sampled from the instruments put forth in the three articles that were isolated. After the rounds of expert judging and refinement the Provider Discrimination scale contains 12 items while the Provider Acceptance of Culture scale contains 17 items. Conclusion. Initial observations from the launch of pilot testing of this measure reveals there is adequate flow to the items in this instrument. This supports sampling from the literature and having several rounds of expert opinions in different settings when creating a novel instrument. Grants. Health Professions Research Grant