Doctoral Degrees (Industrial Psychology)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Industrial Psychology) by browse.metadata.advisor "Mash, Bob"

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    The development and psychometric evaluation of a medical practitioner compassion competency questionnaire
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Visser, Michelle; Jäckel, Michelle; Theron, Callie C.; Mash, Bob; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Industrial Psychology.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY : Medical practitioner compassion has been identified as a key construct in healthcare, not only by prominent healthcare stakeholders such as the World Health Organisation, the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the South African National Department of Health, but also by patients and practitioners themselves. Patients want to be treated in a compassionate way during the medical encounter. The concern, however, exists that too many medical practitioners still utilise a biomedical approach, as opposed to a bio-psychosocial approach, when interacting with patients. If the level of compassion competence displayed by medical practitioners is to be purposefully managed it needs to be monitored through measurement. Defining and measuring a behavioural construct like medical practitioner compassion, however, remains a challenge and therefore provides a strong rationale for research in this area. Despite some research done on compassion where the construct is typically described as either a state or trait, inconclusive and varied research results are offered for the construct “compassion”, specifically in the healthcare sector. In addition, a psychometrically sound instrument measuring this construct, conceptualised as a multidimensional behavioural competency, seems to be absent, not only in the South African context, but also internationally. This emphasised the need to not only conceptualise medical practitioner compassion from a theoretical perspective, but to also operationalise the compassion construct via a Medical Practitioner Compassion Competency Questionnaire (MPCCQ) and to follow a rigorous empirical investigation into the construct validity of the construct-referenced inferences derived from the dimensions’ scores obtained on the MPCCQ. By addressing this challenge in an attempt to contribute to the improvement of medical practitioner compassion in the South African public healthcare sector, the current study firstly conceptualised and constitutively defined compassion as a behavioural construct. The connotative meaning that the constitutive definition of this construct needed to capture lies in the internal structure of the construct and the manner in which the construct is embedded in a larger nomological network of other related constructs. By dissecting the competency of compassion, insight was gained into the internal structure of the construct, resulting in the identification of six structurally inter-related latent compassion dimensions. The connotative meaning of the competency was finally brought to fruition in the outcome structural model that was proposed. The research methodology utilised in operationalising the six latent compassion dimensions in terms of their behavioural denotations, consisted of qualitative critical incident technique interviews, where medical practitioners were utilised as co-researchers in understanding their mental models of compassion from a competency perspective. The research findings from the qualitative interviews enabled the researchers to write behavioural anchors that were subsequently re-written as test items for the MPCCQ. Qualitative validation sessions were held with some of the medical practitioners to obtain subject matter feedback on the wording of the items so as to iterate the wording of the items to the final version of the standardised 37-item competency questionnaire, which was then completed by medical practitioners (n = 234) at the 21st National Family Practitioners Congress held in Cape Town during 2019, at Karl Bremer hospital, Khayelitsha hospital, Tygerberg hospital and at Worcester hospital, all situated in the Western Cape province, South Africa. Subsequently the quantitative data gathered from the questionnaire were analysed with the statistical packages, SPSS 25 and LISREL 8.8. The quantitative findings based on the evaluation of the MPCCQ provided excellent model fit, not only for the measurement model but also for the structural model reflecting the internal structure that was attributed to the multidimensional compassion construct. Even though above expectation good measurement and structural model fit was obtained, it is still recommended that additional test items should be developed for the subscales where lower Cronbach alpha values were obtained and where factor fission was obtained. Most importantly, the MPCCQ showed construct validity, thus clearing the first hurdle necessary to allow the eventual utilisation of this instrument in practice. The study concludes with practical managerial implications and suggestions for further research necessary to allow the confident utilisation of the MPCCQ in practice.