Purpose: The questionnaire "Professional Fulfillment Index" (PFI) was validated to assess emotional exhaustion, interpersonal disengagement, and professional achievement among physicians. This study presents the process of cross-cultural adaptation of the PFI to the Brazilian context.
Design: Analytical cross-sectional study carried out between July and October 2020. Settings: For conceptual equivalence, a panel of experts was constituted who conducted analyzes on the translation and back-translation processes from English to Brazilian Portuguese.
Subjects: For the operational equivalence, 432 physicians in the field of Occupational Medicine were invited.
Measures: They answered the PFI in an online platform. Analysis: Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were performed to seek evidence of the hypothesized structure of PFI item responses. Reliability was assessed using three indicators.
Results: The Brazilian version can be considered similar to the original. Most of participants were female (57.6%) and mean age 49.6 years-SD 14.0. The mean time since graduation was 18.5 years-SD 9.67. Most of them had a full-time job (88.0%) and were trained through post-graduation courses 83.8%. The most frequent job task was to perform worker´s clinical evaluations (84.9%). Exploratory and confirmatory analyzes showed the adequacy of the items in measuring the instrument's construct, with stability for use in other populations and samples.
Conclusion: The PFI was developed to evaluate positive and negative aspects of physicians' role and performance. The process described in this article was the first cross-cultural adaptation of the questionnaire. The PFI can help in mapping potential risk situations for negative impacts on physicians' occupational well-being and performance at work, in order to propose interventions that reduce exhaustion and expand professional fulfillment.
Keywords: burnout; occupational health; professional; psychometrics; surveys and questionnaires.