Development and Evaluation of Shared Medical Decision-Making Scale for End-of-Life Patients in Korea

Abstract

The study was done to develop a shared decision-making scale for end-of-life patients in Korea. The process included construction of a conceptual framework, generation of initial items, verification of content validity, selection of secondary items, preliminary study, and extraction of final items. The participants were 388 adults who lived in one of 3 Korean metropolitan cities: Seoul, Daegu, or Busan. Item analysis, factor analysis, criterion related validity, and internal consistency were used to analyze the data. Data collection was done from July to October 2011. Thirty-four items were selected for the final scale, and categorized into 7 factors explaining 61.9% of the total variance. The factors were labeled as sharing information (9 items), constructing system (7 items), explanation as a duty (5 items), autonomy (4 items), capturing time (3 items), participation of family (3 items), and human respect (3 items). The scores for the scale were significantly correlated among shared decision-making scale, terminating life support scale, and dignified dying scale. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the 34 items was .94. The above findings indicate that the shared decision-making scale has a good validity and reliability when used for end-of-life patients in Korea.