Telemedicine: validation of a questionnaire to evaluate the experience of health professionals

Objective. This objective of this work is to develop and validate a questionnaire to evaluate health professio-nals' experience with telemedicine systems.Methods. Based on an abbreviated, locally validated Spanish-language version of the patient questionnaire developed by Parmanto et al., a group of experts developed a version to evaluate the experience of health professionals who provide telemedicine services. The psychometric behavior of the items was tested in an ini-tial sample of 129 professionals, using exploratory factor analysis. The comprehensibility of the items was then assessed through cognitive interviews. Finally, in a new sample of 329 professionals, the construct validity of the questionnaire was evaluated by means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); its criteria of external validity were assessed by comparing the score with that of a summary question.Results. A 12-item questionnaire was obtained, with a two-factor structure and acceptable adjustment indica-tors documented through CFA. Reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity were appropriate. The criteria of external validity showed optimal results.Conclusions. The instrument obtained has adequate psychometric properties and will contribute to the objec-tive evaluation of the experience of health professionals who perform telemedicine.