Identifying physicians likely to benefit from depression education

BACKGROUND. Few methods exist to identify physicians: who might benefit fro m depression education. OBJECTIVES. To develop a measure of physicians' confidence or self-efficacy in caring for depressed patients and assess it's reliability and validity. RESEARCH DESIGN. A national sample of primary care physicians were surveyed and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify factors underly ing physicians' responses to 26 items. We named the factors, selected items with factor loadings greater than or equal to0.50 for final scales, and te sted a priori hypotheses about self-efficacy. SUBJECTS. 1) Random cross-sectional sample of family physicians, internists , obstetrician-gynecologists, and pediatricians (n = 5,369) and 2) 49 gener al internists and family physicians participating in a prepost evaluation o f a depression workshop. RESULTS. In the national sample, 3,712 physicians were eligible and 2,104 r esponded. Forty-six percent were female, and 51% were family physicians and general internists. EFA identified 5 factors, the first of which was calle d Self-Efficacy (4 items, alpha = 0.86). More family physicians (64%) had c onfidence (self-efficacy) in caring for depressed patients compared with ge neral internists (33%), obstetrician-gynecologists (16%), and pediatricians (6%) (P <0.001). Few physicians intended to change their care of depressed patients (10%) or take CME on depression (24%). Of the 49 physicians atten ding a depression workshop, 76% reported high self-efficacy after the works hop versus 50% before it (P = 0.013). CONCLUSIONS. This study supports the reliability and validity of the Self-E fficacy scale as one method to identify physicians who might benefit from i nterventions. New approaches are needed because physicians are unlikely to change.