Development and Psychometric Testing of the Provider Co-Management Index: Measuring Nurse Practitioner-Physician Co-Management.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Provider co-management has emerged in practice to alleviate demands of larger, more complex patient panels, yet no tools exist to measure nurse practitioner (NP)-physician co-management. The purpose of this study is to develop a tool that measures NP-physician co-management.

METHODS: Items were generated based on three theoretical dimensions of co-management. Face and content validity were established with six experts. Pilot testing was conducted with a convenience sample of 40 NPs and physicians. We computed mean, standard deviation, skewness, interitem and corrected item-total correlations, and Cronbach's alpha.

RESULTS: Psychometric analysis yielded high subscale reliability: effective communication (α = .811); mutual respect and trust (α = .746); and shared philosophy of care (α = .779).

CONCLUSIONS: PCMI demonstrates strong internal reliability consistency. Future research to examine construct validity is recommended.