Leslie Jackson, M.D.

While many clinicians manage bone health, established competencies to assess those clinician’s do not exist.

A team of UAB researchers, led by assistant professor Lesley Jackson, M.D., aimed to define the skills and attributes associated with competent bone health clinicians.

Jackson’s team invited patient advocates and clinicians to create a list of desirable characteristics for bone health clinicians. Participants prioritized characteristics by perceived importance. Participants next ranked 20 hypothetical clinicians representing various levels of these established characteristics.

Jackson’s team conducted a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to score each hypothetical clinician’s perceived competency. The competency threshold was determined as the total score at which over 70% of participants agreed a clinician had adequate competency. Thirteen participants generated lists of desirable characteristics, and 30 participants ranked hypothetical scenarios and participated in the DCE.

This exercise generated 108 characteristics, further reduced to eight categories with 20 levels of associated points. The maximum possible score was 25 points. A summed threshold score of over 12 points classified a clinician as having adequate bone health competency.

Jackson’s team developed a numeric additive decision rule to define clinicians across multiple specialties as having adequate competency in managing bone health/osteoporosis. Their data provides easily understood criteria to evaluate for bone health clinicians and researchers.