Design and validation of a scale to assess Latin American medical students' perception on the labour of the first level of health care

Objectives. To design and validate a scale to assess Latin American medical students' perception on first level of health care (FLHC). Materials and methods. An observational, analytic and multicentre study was carried out in two phases: i) A self-administered questionnaire regarding perceptions on FLHClabor was designed. ii) This questionnaire was applied to to medical students from 18 universities of eight Spanish-speaking Latin American countries. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed through a principal components analysis with orthogonal varimax rotation. Sample adequacy was evaluated. Factor extraction was based on Kaiser's criteria, Cattell's Scree test and the explained variance (>5%). Internal consistency was measured with Cronbach's alpha. Results. 423 students were included in the analysis; 53.4% were from Peruvian universities. After the EFA, the questionnaire conserved 11 items, which were distributed in three domains, that explaining together 55.47% of the total variance: i) Perceptions concerning the FLHC physician; ii) Perceptions concerning the FiLC labor and iii) Perceptions about the economic consequences of working in FLHC. Conclusion. The scale is composed by three domains and can be used to assess the perceptions of the medical work on first level of health care of Spanish-speaking Latin American medical students.