Lecturer JSS College Of Pharmacy JSS College of Pharmacy, Mysuru Mysuru, India
Background: Oral anticoagulants (OAs) are often used in the treatment and prevention of various thromboembolic events. The ideal management of OA therapy is crucial for effectual treatment due to their narrow therapeutic index. Patients’ knowledge about their medical condition and medications will affect their treatment outcomes. Therefore, it is important to assess the patients’ perceptive about OA therapy. There are various tools available to assess the patients perceptive but a comprehensive tool that assesses knowledge, attitudes, practices, satisfaction and adherence of OA therapy is unavailable.
Objectives: To develop and validate a questionnaire to assess knowledge, attitude, practice and satisfaction in the patients using oral anticoagulants.
Methods: A thirty-two-item tool with four domains was created, following a thorough literature search. Two physicians, two academic professionals, and six practicing pharmacists validated the tool. Further, the scale was pilot tested among 30 patients taking OAs. The homogeneity and reproducibility of the questionnaire were measured following Cronbach’s alpha (α>0.70) coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC>0.80) respectively. All the statistical analysis was carried out using IBM SPSS version 25.0.
Results: The Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficient for homogeneity of perceptions, perspectives, practice, and satisfaction domains was 0.83, 0.92, 0.79 and 0.88 (p < 0.001) respectively. Whereas the intraclass correlation coefficient for each domain was 0.92, 0.96, 0.91, and 0.92 (p>0.001). The item level content validity index (I-CVI) and scale level content validity index (S-CVI) was found to be 91%.
Conclusions: A tool for assessing perceptions, perspectives, practice, and satisfaction in patients using OAs has been developed and validated. The scale has been found to be more reliable, reproducible, and has virtuous internal consistency.
