Development and Initial Validation of Stigma Towards Healthcare Providers Working with COVID-19 Patients Scale (S19-HCPs).

PURPOSE: The S19-HCPs tool evaluates the stigma towards healthcare providers working with patients with COVID-19. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The psychometric properties of the Arabic and English versions of the S19-HCPs were examined. A survey using the S19-HCPs scale was administered online. Two reliability analyses were used in this study to identify the extent to which S19-HCPs shows consistent results (internal consistency and test-retest reliability). The English version of the scale was piloted on 33 Jordanian and the Arabic version on 27 Iraqi participants. RESULTS: The internal consistency of the English and Arabic S19-HCPs was satisfactory (α = 0.79, 0.74, respectively). Two-week test-retest correlations were all statistically significant (ICC = 0.91, 0.89, respectively). CONCLUSION: The S19-HCPs is psychometrically robust and can be used in research assessing the stigma towards healthcare providers working with patients with COVID-19 in English and Arabic-speaking countries.