Reliability and validity of the patient activation measure in hospitalized patients.
Jennifer E Prey, Min Qian, Susan Restaino and 6 others
PMID 27422339WHAT IT FOUND
A patient activation questionnaire separated hospitalized patients admitted through the emergency department from those admitted on a planned basis.
Unplanned admissions had 56% low activation versus 24% planned.
Key findings
01The 13 PAM questions showed adequate internal consistency (0.81).
02Low activation was more common after unplanned admissions than planned admissions, 56% versus 24% (p = 0.001).
03Hospitalized patients had lower PAM-13 levels than four published studies.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was done at one urban academic hospital, so it may not apply to other inpatient settings. It excluded non-English speakers and patients with severe cognitive or psychiatric impairment, so it does not speak to those groups. The sample was limited to hospitalized cardiology and oncology patients. The analysis of demographic predictors was small and underpowered, so it cannot reliably identify who has low activation. The study did not test whether using the PAM changes care or improves outcomes. Comparisons with other studies used published PAM distributions, not individual patient data, and the other studies had different settings and ages.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists U.S. government and NIH research support, but no conflict of interest statement is given.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that using the PAM improves patient care or outcomes. The study only tested whether the questionnaire worked in hospitalized patients; it did not test an intervention or show that unplanned admission causes low activation.