OBJECTIVES : For many persons living with HIV (PLWH), their health and wellbeing will require long-term consistent adherence with antiretroviral therapy, in addition to managing prescriptions from other healthcare providers for chronic conditions. Pharmacists are well positioned to help coordinate and manage prescriptions from multiple providers to ensure PLWH health outcomes are optimized. We developed and assessed psychometric properties of a scale to assess the facilitators of pharmacist-physician collaboration (P-PC).

METHODS : A 12-item instrument was developed from 31 pharmacists’ interviews and a comprehensive literature review. Psychometric properties were assessed from surveys of 10 content experts and 184 ambulatory pharmacists in 37 States. Psychometric tests included: content validity index (CVI); Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to assess construct validity; and internal reliability using Cronbach’s alpha (α).

RESULTS : All items had a CVI =>0.9. All 12 items were retained after EFA, which generated a single factor with high loadings (0.72 to 0.92), demonstrated good internal consistency (α≤0.96) and had an explained variance of 72%. However, 5 items were dropped after CFA. The final 7-item scale showed excellent model fit: chi-square goodness-of-fit (p=0.06), Root Mean Square Residual (0.011), Comparative Fit Index (0.954), Goodness-of-fit (0.973), and an acceptable Root Mean Square of (0.06). The final P-PC scale indicated that facilitators of good pharmacist-provider collaborations include physicians characteristics (credible, trustworthy and reliable), and communications that open, needs understood, disagreements resolved, and included future working relationship. The P-PC score ranged from 7-38 (mean 33.7, SD 5.35). For known-groups validity, HIV-certified pharmacists had comparatively higher and statistically significant P-PC score compared to non-certified pharmacists (4.00, p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS : The 7-item P-PC scale had strong psychometric properties including content, construct and criterion validity, and high internal consistency. The P-PC would need to be validated in other studies to assess other psychometric properties including test-retest reliability.