Measuring Clinicians' Communication Self-Efficacy

We intended to create a generic assessment instrument to capture the skills used in prolonged patient-centered conversations performed by the different occupational groups, primarily physicians, nurses, health care assistants, midwives, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists. It was also essential to design a questionnaire capable of measuring the clinicians’ self-efficacy both before and after attending the communication skills training course to compare the level of skills evaluated by perceived self-efficacy. The target population was essential in the selection of items for the questionnaire. Communication teachers and former course participants were included in focus group discussions to provide a good framework for SE item construction. After some adjustments in consideration of the population of interest, we selected twelve questions reflecting general clinical communication skills. Each question began with the words: “How certain are you that you are able to successfully …” followed by a specific communication skill. A 10-point response scale ranging from 1 (very uncertain) to 10 (very certain) was chosen inspired by Bandura’s guide for constructing self-efficacy scales [22 ]. Although Bandura recommends a 0–10 response scale, we chose to use a 1–10 scale and add a “not relevant” check box. Respondents were advised to use this check box only if s/he could not find a specific item/communication skill relevant for their clinical practice. In addition to the 12 self-efficacy items, the questionnaire contained 5 items regarding background data about the course participants.