Identifying Physicians Likely to Benefit from Depression Education: A Challenge for Health Care Organizations

Background. Few methods exist to identify physicians who might benefit from depression education. Objectives. To develop a measure of physicians' confidence or self-efficacy in caring for depressed patients and assess it's reliability and validity. Research Design. A national sample of pri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical care 2001-08, Vol.39 (8), p.856-866
Main Authors: Gerrity, Martha S., Williams, John W., Dietrich, Allen J., Olson, Ardis L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cross-Sectional Studies
Datasets
Depressive Disorder - therapy
Depressive disorders
Education, Medical, Continuing
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Family physicians
Female
Humans
Male
Medical practice
Mental health
Motivation
Pediatrics
Physicians
Physicians, Family - education
Physicians, Family - psychology
Physicians, Family - standards
Primary health care
Primary Health Care - standards
Reproducibility of Results
Self Efficacy
Social learning theory
Surveys and Questionnaires
United States
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Summary:Background. Few methods exist to identify physicians who might benefit from depression education. Objectives. To develop a measure of physicians' confidence or self-efficacy in caring for depressed patients and assess it's reliability and validity. Research Design. A national sample of primary care physicians were surveyed and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify factors underlying physicians' responses to 26 items. We named the factors, selected items with factor loadings ≥0.50 for final scales, and tested a priori hypotheses about self-efficacy. Subjects. 1) Random cross-sectional sample of family physicians, internists, obstetrician-gynecologists, and pediatricians (n = 5,369) and 2) 49 general internists and family physicians participating in a prepost evaluation of a depression workshop. Results. In the national sample, 3,712 physicians were eligible and 2,104 responded. Forty-six percent were female, and 51% were family physicians and general internists. EFA identified 5 factors, the first of which was called Self-Efficacy (4 items, alpha = 0.86). More family physicians (64%) had confidence (self-efficacy) in caring for depressed patients compared with general internists (33%), obstetrician-gynecologists (16%), and pediatricians (6%) (P
ISSN:0025-7079
1537-1948
DOI:10.1097/00005650-200108000-00011