Development of a Psychological Scale for Measuring Disruptive Clinician Behavior

Disruptive clinician behavior worsens communication, information transfer, and teamwork, all of which negatively affect patient safety. Improving safety in medical care requires an accurate assessment of the damage caused by disruptive clinician behavior. Psychometric scales complement case reports, but existing scales have significant limitations. Therefore, this study developed a psychometric scale based on the psychological paradigm to assess disruptive clinician behavior.

The scale was developed through a sequence of steps. First, we used an open-ended questionnaire targeting 712 nurses, content analysis, and content validity assessment by 5 experts to determine valid items for disruptive clinical behavior. Next, an Internet questionnaire survey targeting 1000 health care staff, exploratory factor analysis, and subfactor analysis was conducted to identify necessary and sufficient factors. Then, we calculated difficulty level and discriminative power. We also conducted a field questionnaire survey targeting 84 staff in a hospital. Finally, we calculated ω coefficients and then used confirmatory factor analysis to verify the fit of the hypothesized model.

Our open-ended survey involving 478 nurses identified 47 codes in 9 categories. The questionnaire survey involving hospital 1000 medical staff identified 6 factors, with 1 factor subdivided into 4 subfactors and 1 into 2 subfactors. The goodness of fit of the hypothesized 10-factor models with factor pairs and groups was confirmed.

We developed a psychometric scale measuring subjective assessments of harm covering various disruptive clinician behaviors. The scale complements interviews and case reports by generating valid, reliable scores for various disruptive clinician behaviors in health care institutions.