title: Communication about patient pain in primary care: development of the Physician-Patient Communication about Pain scale (PCAP).
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper describes the development of the 47-item Physician-Patient Communication about Pain (PCAP) scale for use with audiotaped medical visit interactions.
  
  
  METHODS
  Patient pain was assessed with the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 Bodily Pain Scale. Four raters assessed 181 audiotaped patient interactions with 68 physicians. Descriptive statistics of PCAP items were computed. Principal components analyses with 20 scale items were used to reduce the scale to composite variables for analyses. Validity was assessed through (1) comparing PCAP composite scores for patients with high versus low pain and (2) correlating PCAP composites with a separate communication rating scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Principal components analyses yielded four physician and five patient communication composites (mean alpha=.77). Some evidence for concurrent validity was provided (5 of 18 correlations with communication validation rating scale were significant). Paired-sample t tests showed significant differences for 4 patient PCAP composites, showing the PCAP scale discriminates between high and low pain patients' communication.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The PCAP scale shows partial evidence of reliability and two forms of validity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  More research with this scale (developing more reliable and valid composites) is needed to extend these preliminary findings before this scale is applicable for use in practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA. kh36@txstate.edu
authors.forename: Kelly B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Haskard-Zolnierek
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013637:Tape Recording; D055815:Young Adult