Development and psychometric assessment of self-reported patient medication safety scale (SR-PMSS)

OBJECTIVES: Patient medication safety can affect their clinical outcomes and plays an important role in patient safety management. However, few tools have been developed to assess patient medication safety. This study aimed to develop and validate the self-reported patient medication safety scale (SR-PMSS). METHODS: We developed SR-PMSS guided by the Donabedian Structure-Process-Outcome framework and used psychometric methods to test its validity and reliability. RESULTS: A total of 501 patients with an average age of 56.81 ± 14.47 were enrolled in this study. The SR-PMSS consisted of 21 items and 5 factors. The content validity was good with item-level content validity index (CVI) > 0.78, average scale-level CVI (S-CVI) > 0.9, and universal agreement S-CVI > 0.8. Exploratory factor analysis extracted a five-factor solution with eigenvalues > 0.1, explaining 67.766% of the variance. Confirmatory factor analysis showed good model fit, acceptable convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The Cronbach’s α coefficient for SR-PMSS was 0.929, the split-half reliability coefficient was 0.855, and the test–retest reliability coefficient was 0.978. CONCLUSIONS: The SR-PMSS was a valid and reliable instrument with good reliability and validity to evaluate the level of patient medication safety. The target users of the SR-PMSS are all people who are taking or have used prescription medications. The SR-PMSS can be used by healthcare providers in clinical practice and research to identify patients at risk for medication use and intervene with them to reduce adverse medication events and provide support for patient safety management. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: SR-PMSS – a self-reported tool to assess patient medication safety Medication therapy was the most common and frequent treatment method to prevent and cure diseases. Medication safety issues may occur in the process of medication use. Patient medication safety can affect their clinical outcomes and plays an important role in patient safety management. However, there are few tools to assess patient medication safety currently, and most of them focused on medication safety related to hospitals or healthcare workers. We developed the self-reported patient medication safety scale (SR-PMSS) guided by the Donabedian Structure-Process-Outcome framework. Then, we conducted a two-round expert consultation, clarity verification, and item simplification to determine the final version of the scale. The SR-PMSS consisted of 21 items and 5 factors and it had good validity and reliability. The target users of the SR-PMSS are all people who are taking or have used prescription medications. Healthcare providers can use the SR-PMSS in clinical practice and research to identify patients at risk for medication use and intervene with them to reduce adverse medication events and provide support for patient safety management.