Measuring persistent somatic symptom related stigmatisation: Development of the Persistent Somatic Symptom Stigma scale for (HCPs), 2024, olde Hartman

Measuring persistent somatic symptom related stigmatisation: Development of the Persistent Somatic Symptom Stigma scale for healthcare professionals (PSSS-HCP)

Brodie McGhie-Fraser, Caoimhe McLoughlin, Peter Lucassen, Aranka Ballering, Sandra van Dulmen, Evelien Brouwers, Jon Stone, Tim olde Hartman

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399924001016?via=ihub

Objective
Persistent somatic symptoms (PSS) describe recurrent or continuously occurring symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, or pain that have persisted for at least several months. These include single symptoms such as chronic pain, combinations of symptoms, or functional disorders such as fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome. While stigmatisation by healthcare professionals is regularly reported, there are limited measurement instruments demonstrating content validity. This study develops a new instrument to measure stigmatisation by healthcare professionals, the Persistent Somatic Symptom Stigma scale for Healthcare Professionals (PSSS-HCP).

Results
After research team consensus and initial feedback, we retained 40 items for cognitive interviewing. After our first round of interviews (n = 11), we removed 20 items, added three items and amended five items. After our second round of interviews (n = 7), we removed four items and amended three items. No major problems with relevance, comprehensibility, comprehensiveness or social desirability were found in remaining items.

 

I didn't dig into it much, but at first glance it's actually not clueless. But seeing Jon Stone and how utterly bizarre it is that in response to this whole concept being discriminatory, their solution is to create yet another questionnaire to assess that discrimination, on some bases that are literally the basis of however they want to call psychosomatic symptoms these days, like a lack of objective tests and incongruence between symptoms and what's expected from clinical literature, is really odd.

It's especially absurd that they created a questionnaire on discrimination by health care professionals against patients, by only asking health care professionals. Anyway, maybe it's not all that bad, but this just looks to me like the old loop of creating questionnaires about angels dancing on hairpins instead of doing real work.

 

This seems like the ultimate paper on the:
Taking The Pisss-hiccup (wink wink) index. (Ideal for lock-down parties and such.)
But there needs to be an index for measuring people writing papers like this taking the pisss out of the people they are taking the pisss out of surely?
And then of course an index for those inventing that said index... taking the pisss.

An alternative would be to take the pisss out of these authors' names.

Maybe they should forget about patients altogether and just take the pisss out of each other for ever on. Could be a good move.

 

Maybe they're developing it into a competitive sport.

Next paper will describe the bonus points for creativity in derisive acronyms for patients.

 

For reference.

"We use the term PSS here also because it is the preferred umbrella term by people living with symptoms [3],"

ref 3 is to The Most Popular Terms for Medically Unexplained Symptoms: The Views of CFS Patients, 2015, Picariello et al

"During clinical consultations, people with PSS have reported being dismissed, accused of faking or exaggerating symptoms, and having truthfulness in reporting symptoms questioned [[12], [13], [14], [15], [16]]. Healthcare professionals themselves report stigmatising attitudes towards people with PSS, questioning the legitimacy of symptoms and motivations for seeking treatment [[17], [18], [19]]."

Ref 13 is to Women’s experiences of stigma in relation to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, and ref 19 is to US healthcare providers’ knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions concerning chronic fatigue syndrome

 

And almost always used to mean the opposite of what it means, while feebly hiding the fact.