Learning Objective #1: Discuss the process of developing and evaluating the Health Partnership Scale

Learning Objective #2: Describe the clinical significance of evaluating the provider-patient relationship with the Health Partnership Scale

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Background: Provider-patient relationships are recognized as important for adherence and ultimately improved health status. Health partnership is characterized as a practice model that advocates mutuality, shared accountability, responsibility and decision-making, and combined action toward meeting health care goals. There are several instruments that measure alliance, however no measures of health partnership were found. Objective: To establish psychometric properties of the Health Partnership Scale (HPS). Instrument Development: Following review of literature and qualitative data from experts, a conceptual schema of health partnership was developed. Four dimensions of the concept were identified: connection, reciprocity, sharing/integration, and synergy. Experts wrote items for each dimension. An 85-item judge's version of the HPS was developed to evaluate content validity. Items with low validity ratings were deleted. The new scale contained 60 items with CVI percentages from .80 to .94; total scale CVI was .87. Pilot Testing: A study with 68 participants was conducted to evaluate psychometric properties of the HPS. Following factor analysis, the scale was revised to 38 items. Correlation between the subscales was high, indicating the HPS was one scale with four dimensions. The reliability coefficient was .98. Convergent/divergent validity was supported. Psychometric Evaluation: A study with 297 participants was conducted in two primary care clinics to confirm the results of the pilot study and evaluate the HPS usefulness in a clinical setting. Following factor analysis, the scale was revised to 30 items with three dimensions: synergy-integration, communication-sharing and reciprocity. The reliability coefficient for the HPS was 0.97. Convergent and divergent validity were supported. Health partnership predicted 53.9 % of the variance in General Satisfaction (p < 0.001). Conclusion: There is little known about health partnerships between providers and their patients. The reliable/valid HPS can be used in research to fill gaps in knowledge.