Elaboração e validação de instrumento para avaliar o conhecimento de médicos sobre fotoproteção

Abstract

The increasing expansion of Brazil’s primary care teams in recent years strengthens the role of general practitioners in guiding safe sun exposure practices, but their knowledge of photoprotection is unknow. The present study aims to develop and validate an instrument to evaluate the knowledge of general practitioners and pediatricians about photoprotection, gauging the knowledge of these professionals on the subject. The process followed five steps: 1) Literature identification and items elaboration related to the theme; 2) content validation; 3) apparent validation; 4) construct validation: internal consistency analysis and discriminatory analysis; 5) reliability analysis. In step 4, the instrument was applied to 217 general practitioners and pediatricians who worked in the host city of the study; the scores were compared with the dermatologists scores. The final instrument had 41 itens and showed satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alfa of 0.780), satisfactory reproducibility and good test-retest reliability (good to excellent kappa statistic in more than 60% of items). The discriminatory analysis registered a mean score of 54.1 (sd ± 8,8) points for dermatologists and 31.1 (sd ± 12,9) points for generalists and pediatricians, for a total of 82 possible points, representing a statistically significant difference (p < 0,001). Generalists and pediatricians have demonstrated and understanding of the relationship between excess sun exposure and skin cancer and the importance of primary prevention in efforts to combat melanoma, but have exposed a lack of important and necessary technical information to the practice of health care professionals who deal with primary care. The results showed that it is an instrument with good internal consistency and good reproducibility. It could be useful in the identification of general practitioners and pediatricians knowledge gaps on the subject, for later programming of formative and educational strategies. Keywords: Solar energy; Ultraviolet rays; Sunscreening agents; Validation studies; Health education.