Inter- and Intra-Rater Reliability of the Measure of Patient-Centered Communication

Introduction: The patient-centered clinical method allows the biopsychosocial model to be implemented in clinical practice. It is critical to look at the use of the patient-centered clinical method, which has been shown to benefit both patients and clinicians, particularly in primary care. The Measure of Patient-Centered Communication (MPPC) is a theory-based instrument for assessment of patient-physician interaction. The aim of this research is to investigate the inter- and intra-rater reliability of the MPCC tool in Turkish. Methods: Audiovisual recordings of 60 patient-physician consultations of 30 family physicians were evaluated. Three researchers independently assessed and scored these interviews with MPCC by following the instructions in the manual of the tool. Evaluators reassessed the randomly selected 20 consultations 15 days later to determine the intra-rater reliability. For each component score and the overall score, ICC estimates, and their 95% confidence intervals were calculated based on a mean-rating (k=3), consistency, 2-way mixed-effects model. Results: The ICCs for overall score and component one were 0.810 and 0.820, respectively, for all 60 consultations, demonstrating strong inter-rater reliability. Components two and three had ICCs of 0.646, indicating strong reliability, and 0.537, indicating moderate reliability. All researchers' intra-rater correlation scores for all score groups ranged between 0.989 and 0.698, indicating good to excellent reliability. Conclusions: MPCC tool is reliable in its current form as it is translated into another language and conducted in another sociocultural environment.