TY - JOUR
T1 - A scale for measurement of the problem patient labeling process
AU - McGaghie, William C.
AU - Whitenack, Donald C.
PY - 1982/10
Y1 - 1982/10
N2 - Physicians frequently use the term problem patient to subjectively label individuals who present with vague and shifting symptoms involving multiple organ systems, chronically complain, constantly worry about their health, and contribute in other ways to physician uncertainty and frustration. This article describes the development and reliability and validity studies of an instrument that objectively measures physicians’ perceptions of problem patients. As such, the instrument quantifies a key qualitative impression that physicians may formulate. Use of the instrument in an ambulatory care setting yielded highly reliable data which, when subjected to correlation and regression analyses, display expected relationships with a parsimonious set of independent variables. We conclude that the instrument holds promise for further clinical and research work involving problem patients.
AB - Physicians frequently use the term problem patient to subjectively label individuals who present with vague and shifting symptoms involving multiple organ systems, chronically complain, constantly worry about their health, and contribute in other ways to physician uncertainty and frustration. This article describes the development and reliability and validity studies of an instrument that objectively measures physicians’ perceptions of problem patients. As such, the instrument quantifies a key qualitative impression that physicians may formulate. Use of the instrument in an ambulatory care setting yielded highly reliable data which, when subjected to correlation and regression analyses, display expected relationships with a parsimonious set of independent variables. We conclude that the instrument holds promise for further clinical and research work involving problem patients.
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U2 - 10.1097/00005053-198210000-00003
DO - 10.1097/00005053-198210000-00003
M3 - Article
C2 - 7108495
AN - SCOPUS:0019957841
SN - 0022-3018
VL - 170
SP - 598
EP - 604
JO - Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
JF - Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
IS - 10
ER -