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Research of the Week: The Design and Testing of the Psychometric Properties of the Person Engagement Index Instrument to Measure a Person’s Capacity to Engage in Health Care

Oct 18, 2018 | Blog, Nursing Articles, Patient Care, Research

We’re starting a new feature for DailyNurse.com called Research of the Week! We’ll be sharing relevant and interesting research articles from our journals at Springer Publishing Company that we hope you find useful and helpful in your career.

This week we’re featuring The Design and Testing of the Psychometric Properties of the Person Engagement Index Instrument to Measure a Person’s Capacity to Engage in Health Care, from the Journal of Nursing Measurement. Author Ellen Swartwout, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, provided some insight as to why the person engagement index is so crucial for patient care. Read more below:

Previous research has identified patient and family engagement as an essential element to optimize self-care management and improve patient outcomes1. Although much has been written about the importance of patient and family engagement, clinical care delivery models, processes and tools to translate patient engagement strategies into practice are needed2. In the July 2018 issue of the Journal of Nursing Measurement, the article entitled, “The Design and Testing of the Psychometric Properties of the Person Engagement Index (PEI) Instrument to Measure a Person’s Capacity to Engage in Health Care” discusses the development and testing of an instrument to measure a person’s capacity to engage in their health care3. The instrument was created based on review of the literature and underwent clinical expert review and validation prior to cognitive testing among adult medical-surgical patients. After cognitive testing, instrument items were revised to reflect patients’ feedback and tested in a multi-site research study involving four healthcare systems with five unique inpatient medical-surgical units. The PEI was developed for use in the assessment phase of the Interactive Care ModelTM — a five phase care delivery model for clinicians to use with people to engage them in their health care journey4.

 

The psychometric properties of the instrument were tested among 338 medical–surgical adult inpatients and found that four subscales comprised the total scale. Using exploratory factor analysis, four factors explained 63.9% of the total variance. The total and subscale reliability testing (Cronbach’s α) all exceeded the .70 threshold. The overall scale Cronbach’s = .896 and the four subscales corresponding Cronbach’s α were: Engagement in Health Care = .885, Technology Use in Health Care = .854, Proactive Approach to Health Care = .728, and Psychosocial Social Support = .880.

 

The results of the study indicate that the PEI is a valid and reliable instrument among the inpatient medical –surgical to measure a person’s capacity to engage in their health care. The importance of creating evidenced-based tools and resources to foster engagement and partnerships between clinicians and those they serve is an important step towards implementing patient engagement strategies. There are currently clinical and research cohorts of healthcare organizations using the PEI in clinical practice demonstration projects and formal research studies to test its use among various populations and settings.

You can read more about Dr. Swartwout’s research on the PEI here. To subscribe to the Journal of Nursing Measurement, click here.

See also
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References
  1. Hibbard, J. H., & Greene, J. (2013). What the evidence shows about patient activation: Better health outcomes and care experiences; fewer data on costs. Health Affairs, 32(2), 207–214.
  2. Carman, K.L., Dardess, P., Maurer, M.E., Workman, T., Ganachari D., & Pathak-Sen, E. A Roadmap for Patient and Family Engagement in Healthcare Practice and Research. (Prepared by the American Institutes for Research under a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Dominick Frosch, Project Officer and Fellow; Susan Baade, Program Officer.) Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation: Palo Alto, CA; September 2014. www.patientfamilyengagement.org.
  3. Swartwout, E., El-Zein, A., Barnett, S., & Drenkard, K. (2018). The design and testing of the psychometric properties of the person engagement index instrument to measure a person’s capacity to engage in health care. Journal of Nursing Measurement, 26(2), 278-295.
  4. Drenkard, K., Swartwout, E., Deyo, P., & O’Neil, M. Interactive Care Model:  A framework for more fully engaging people in their healthcare. Journal of Nursing Administration, 2015; 45(10), 503-510.
Lily Miller
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