Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
BMC Med Educ. 2024 Mar 4;24(1):228. doi: 10.1186/s12909-024-05220-9.
Medical students experience emotional challenges during their undergraduate education, often related to work-based learning. Consequently, they may experience feelings of uncertainty and self-doubt, which can negatively affect their well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to support students' development of their ability to manage distressful situations. Self-efficacy beliefs may be a central aspect of supporting them in this development, and have been shown to relate to resilient factors such as students' motivation, learning, and well-being.
We constructed a scale to measure medical students' physician self-efficacy to manage emotional challenges during work-based learning, the PSMEC scale. The aim of the present study was to evaluate some of the psychometric properties of the PSMEC scale. The scale consists of 17 items covering five subscales: (1) medical knowledge and competence, (2) communication with difficult patients and delivering bad news, (3) being questioned and challenged, (4) educative competence in patient encounters, and (5) ability to establish and maintain relationships with healthcare professionals. Data were collected from 655 medical students from all seven medical schools in Sweden. To investigate the scale's dimensionality and measurement invariance with regard to gender and time in education, single and multiple group confirmatory factor models were estimated using techniques suitable for ordered categorical data. Measures of Cronbach's alpha were calculated to evaluate internal consistency.
The scale showed good internal consistency on both the global dimension and the five subdimensions of self-efficacy. In addition, the scale was shown to be measurement invariant across genders and times in education, indicating that the scale means of male and female medical students and the scale means of students at the middle and end of their education can be compared.
The physician self-efficacy to manage emotional challenges scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, with regards to dimensionality, internal consistency, and measurement invariance relating to gender and time in education, and this study supports the usefulness of this scale when measuring self-efficacy in relation to emotional challenges.
医学生在本科教育阶段会经历情绪挑战，这些挑战通常与基于工作的学习有关。因此，他们可能会感到不安和自我怀疑，这会对他们的幸福感产生负面影响。因此，支持学生发展应对困境的能力至关重要。自我效能信念可能是支持他们发展的一个核心方面，并且已经显示出与学生的动机、学习和幸福感等弹性因素有关。
我们构建了一个衡量医学生在基于工作的学习中管理情绪挑战的医生自我效能感的量表，即 PSMEC 量表。本研究的目的是评估 PSMEC 量表的一些心理测量特性。该量表由 17 个项目组成，涵盖五个子量表：（1）医学知识和能力，（2）与困难患者沟通和传递坏消息，（3）受到质疑和挑战，（4）在患者遭遇中的教育能力，以及（5）与医疗保健专业人员建立和维持关系的能力。数据来自瑞典七所医学院的 655 名医学生。为了研究量表的维度和在性别和教育时间方面的测量不变性，使用适合有序分类数据的技术估计了单组和多组验证性因素模型。计算了克朗巴赫α系数以评估内部一致性。
该量表在整体维度和自我效能的五个子维度上均表现出良好的内部一致性。此外，该量表在性别和教育时间方面表现出测量不变性，这表明可以比较男女生医学生的量表均值以及教育中期和末期学生的量表均值。
管理情绪挑战的医生自我效能感量表在维度、内部一致性和与性别和教育时间有关的测量不变性方面表现出令人满意的心理测量特性，本研究支持在测量与情绪挑战相关的自我效能时使用该量表的有用性。
