[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.