Developing Patient Education Questionnaire in Iranian Population

Introduction: Patient education is a key component for effective self-management and monitoring required with many acute and chronic conditions. The objective of the study was to develop an instrument to measure patient education content. Materials and Methods: First of all, literature searches were undertaken to determine current national and international patient education questionnaires. Then a forty five item questionnaire was developed. The questioner was filled by 396 patients of medical surgical wards of Kerman hospitals. Reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbachʹs alpha. Factor analysis in conjunction with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to assess the construct validity of the instrument. Results: The result regarding reliability of the scale showed that The alpha coefficient of the scale was 0.95. Using PCA, a five-factor solution was selected as the most appropriate model, which accounted for nearly 70% of the total variance; disease information, disease complication, drug information, general information, and miscellaneous. Conclusion: Our new questionnaire demonstrates good psychometric properties. This tool helps patients to create a realistic picture of what to expect in the early recovery period at home.