title: Measuring differences between patients' and physicians' health perceptions: the patient-physician discordance scale.
abstract: We report on the development and validation of an instrument to assess discordance between physicians and their patients on evaluations of health-related information: the Patient-Physician Discordance Scale (PPDS). The 10-item questionnaire is designed to be employed across chronic diseases and can be used in clinical practice and research. It measures the extent of patient-physician discordance on five aspects of the patient's health status and five aspects of the office visit. A prospective study with 200 outpatients with inflammatory bowel disease and their treating physicians revealed that the 10-item discordance scores had good construct validity and satisfactory convergent validity. Overall discordance and the three subscales, discordance on symptoms and treatment, well-being, and communication and satisfaction, identified by factor analysis, had acceptable internal consistency. Patient and physician ratings demonstrated moderate-to-high concurrent validity. Study limitations and directions for future research with PPDS are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Faculté de médecine, Université de Montréal C.P. 6128, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3J7. maida.sewitch@umontreal.ca
authors.forename: Maida J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Sewitch
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Abrahamowicz
authors.forename: Patricia L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Dobkin
authors.forename: Robyn
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tamblyn
mesh_terms: D015746:Abdominal Pain / Q000209:etiology; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / Q000150:complications; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010361:Patients; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010820:Physicians; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires