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The mental state inferences in healthcare professionals scale: a psychometric study

Betancort, Moisés; Delgado, Naira; García-Marco, Enrique; Morera, María Dolores; Lorenzo, Elena; Harris, Lasana T; (2024) The mental state inferences in healthcare professionals scale: a psychometric study. BMC Psychology , 12 , Article 628. 10.1186/s40359-024-02119-4. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Empathizing with patients is an essential component of effective clinical care. Yet, a debate persists regarding how healthcare professionals’ emotions and performance are impacted when they engage in empathetic behaviors and attempt to discern patients’ mental states during clinical interactions. To approach this issue, this study explores the psychometric properties of the Mental State Inferences in Healthcare Professionals Scale (MSIHPS), a novel eight-item scale to evaluate healthcare professionals’ perceptions of their own disposition to infer patients’ mental states during clinical interactions. // Method: The study was conducted across various units within a regional hospital and primary care units affiliated with the Canarian Public Health Service in Spain. Data collection took place over the course of 2022, spanning from February to November. The psychometric properties of the scale were analyzed, including an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis, to test reliability and validity. Additionally, an item response model was run to test potentially biased items. The study collected data from a sample of 585 healthcare professionals. // Results: Overall, the results indicate that the psychometric properties of the tool are adequate. Furthermore, the unidimensionality of the scale was confirmed using the item response model, wherein the eight-items significantly contribute to predicting the latent construct. // Conclusion: The MSIHPS offers the opportunity to explore the role of mentalizing in a diversity of healthcare settings. This measure can be useful to explore the relationship between healthcare professionals’ disposition to infer patients’ mental states and other relevant variables in clinical interactions, such as empathy and clinical performance.

Type: Article
Title: The mental state inferences in healthcare professionals scale: a psychometric study
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s40359-024-02119-4
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-024-02119-4
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Keywords: Health psychology; Psychometric testing; Empathy; Nurse – patient interaction
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200027
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