Two new scales for integrative medical education and research: confidence in providing calm, compassionate care scale (CCCS) and self-efficacy in providing non-drug therapies (SEND) to relieve common symptoms

Abstract

IntroductionTraining in integrative medicine aims to promote compassionate, patient-centered care, including non-pharmaceutical therapies to reduce common symptoms. Although specific competencies have been identified, few tools are available to assess clinician confidence in providing integrative care. We evaluated two instruments to address this gap. MethodsWe assessed face validity with focus groups. We assessed internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha) and convergent validity in a survey of 213 health professionals, correlating the new instruments to each other and to standard measures of mindfulness, compassion, empathy, training, and practice. ResultsThe two measures each had 10 items with scores ranging from 0 to 100, and had good face validity. Cronbach's alpha was 0.87 for the calm, compassionate care scale (CCCS) and 0.95 for self-efficacy in providing non-drug therapies to relieve common symptoms (SEND). Scores for CCCS were significantly correlated with measures of mindfulness, compassion, empathic concern, and perspective-taking as well as training and practice (p<0.05 for each). Scores for SEND were similarly correlated with CCCS, compassion, empathic concern, and perspective-taking as well as training and practice (p<0.05 for each). ConclusionThese two new tools, CCCS and SEND, have good psychometric properties and may be useful to educators and researchers evaluating clinicians’ confidence in providing calm, compassionate care and self-efficacy in using non-drug therapies to relieve common symptoms.