Health Care Professionals' Attitudes Toward Patients with Chronic Pain: Scale Development Study

One of the obstacles in chronic pain management is the attitude of healthcare professionals. Although literature reports that the negative attitudes of healthcare professionals such as stigmatizing their patients with chronic pain and applying inadequate treatment cause failure in chronic pain management, there is no scale to measure the attitudes of healthcare professionals towards patients with chronic pain.

This study aimed to develop a scale for identifying healthcare professionals' attitudes towards patients with chronic pain.

We prepared a draft scale in the form of five-point Likert. We applied the draft scale to 379 voluntary healthcare professionals working in two hospitals in 2019. Internal consistency and testretest methods were employed to determine the reliability of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used for construct validity.

According to the EFA, the scale had two factors explaining 45.68 of the total variant. We labelled the first factor "sensitivity orientation" and the second factor was labelled "misconception orientation". Cronbach Alpha coefficients were 0.88 and 0.75 for the first and second factors respectively. Test-retest method reliability was r = 0.83 in the first factor and r = 0.75 in the second factor. The CFA showed that they were within the limits of acceptable fit values.

Our study found that the scale for healthcare professionals' attitudes towards patients with chronic pain is a valid and reliable tool.