There is a movement in healthcare to train medical workers in patient-centered care due to many positive outcomes resulting from it. Smith’s patient-centered interviewing method (Fortin, Dwamena, Frankel, & Smith, 2012) is a behaviorally-defined, evidence-based method that has shown to be easily learned and associated with positive outcomes such as increased patient satisfaction. However, this method was lacking in a systematic, standardized way of rating adopters of the method to discover which patient-centered skills prescribed by the method led to positive outcomes. Therefore, this research effort involved developing a coding scheme comprising 33 items derived from Smith’s method which includes 5 steps and 21 sub-steps. This research provided evidence for the coding scheme’s validity, as shown through face, content, and construct validity, and inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa = .902). The results of the coding scheme were then tested to determine whether training in patient-centered interviewing led to provider knowledge, provider self-efficacy, or patient satisfaction. Providers who received training in patient-centered interviewing used significantly more patient-centered skills than did untrained providers. Similarly, an increase in patient-centered skill use led to provider self-efficacy. The patient-centered coding scheme developed here will provide institutions with an instrument that combines descriptive and evaluative elements of provider patient-centered behaviors and will allow for a standardized way of evaluating those who adopt the method.
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