Validation of assessment tool to performance leprosy control actions in primary care (PCAT – leprosy): professional version

Abstract

Introduction: Leprosy is still a public health problem in Brazil, and primary health care services play a major role in the prevention and control actions to reduce the burden of disease. Objective: The study aimed to construct and validate an instrument to assess the performance of primary care in leprosy actions control in primary care from the perspective of doctors and nurses. Material and Methods: This study constructed and validated an instrument. The face and content validity was performed with 15 experts, pretesting with 37 professionals in the municipality of Betim and construct and reliability validation were performed with 124 nurses and doctors from Almenara, Governador Valadares and Teófi lo Otoni. Data were collected from June to December 2012. For the construct validation, the exploratory factorial analysis was used. For validity, internal consistency analysis was performed using the Cronbach’s alpha coeffi cient and a value of at least 0.70 was considered. The test / retest reliability study was performed by means of the reapplication of the instrument in 10% of the sample, 30 days after the end of the data collection in each municipality. The Wilcoxon test was used, adopting the value of p≥0.05. Results: The first phase of the study allowed
the exclusion of 86 items of the questionnaire and it was not possible to construct validation because of inadequate sample. It was decided to perform the factorial analysis to explore the behavior of the items of the attributes and to exclude the items in mirror to the version of the instrument for the Community Health Agents that was validated. The instrument proved to be acceptable measures of reliability. Conclusion: The use of the proposed instrument can identify the weaknesses of primary care in leprosy care according to the professionals experience.