Assessments for measuring patient-centered cultural sensitivity in community-based primary care clinics.
OBJECTIVE
To develop and test the reliability of three race/ethnicity-specific forms of the pilot Tucker-Culturally Sensitive Health Care Inventory (T-CUSHCI) for use by patients at community-based primary care centers to evaluate the level of patient-centered cultural sensitivity perceived in the health care that they experience.


METHODS
This research involved two studies using independent samples of primary care patients. In study 1, mostly low-income African-American, Hispanic and non-Hispanic white American patients (N=221) rated the importance of specific provider and office staff behaviors and attitudes, and center policies and physical environment characteristics that were earlier identified in previous focus groups as characteristics of patient-centered culturally sensitive healthcare. In study 2, three pilot race/ethnicity-specific T-CUSHCI patient forms were constructed from the items rated as at least important in study 1. Mostly low-income African-American and non-Hispanic white American patients (N=180) provided data to determine the reliability of the T-CUSHCI patient form for their racial/ethnic group.


RESULTS
The pilot T-CUSHCI-African-American patient form and the pilot T-CUSHCI-non-Hispanic white American patient form were found to have Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranging from 0.71-0.96 and six-month test-retest and split-half reliabilities ranging from 0.92-0.99.


CONCLUSIONS
The pilot T-CUSHCI patient forms (one each for African Americans, Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites) should be further tested using a national sample of patients. In the interim, these inventory forms can be used as clinical tools to obtain patient feedback for providing "individualized" patient-centered culturally sensitive healthcare.
Tucker
Carolyn M
CM
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. cmtucker@ufl.edu
Mirsu-Paun
Anca
A
Van den Berg
Jacob J
JJ
Ferdinand
Lisa
L
Jones
Jessica D
JD
Curry
Robert W
RW
Rooks
Larry G
LG
Walter
Todd J
TJ
Beato
Cristina
C
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel / Q000208:ethnology*; D003153:Community Health Services / Q000592:standards*; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009518:New York; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000208:ethnology*; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000592:standards*; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000295:instrumentation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology