• Shumin Mai and Lu Li.
• School of Medicine, The Institute of Social and Family Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PR China.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2025 Feb 1; 31 (1): e14296e14296.

BackgroundThe patient's perception of physician empathy has a positive influence on patient behavior and treatment effects. The scale of Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) scale has been widely used to measure patients' perceptions of doctor empathy. However, the CARE scale lacks a standardized Mandarin version. In this study, we developed a Mandarin version of the CARE scale and validated its quality.MethodsThere were 341 patients with hypertension and/or diabetes from four primary healthcare centers in Zhejiang Province, China participated in the primary test. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to explore the underlying structure of the scale. Furthermore, the test-retest reliability of the scale was evaluated during this phase.ResultsA total of 1085 patients from six primary-level clinics participated in the secondary test. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to confirm the underlying structure of the scale. The analysis result demonstrated that the Mandarin version of the CARE scale comprises 10 items and 3 dimensions. In the secondary test, the overall Cronbach's α of the scale was 0.91, and the CRs of the 3 dimensions were 0.90, 0.90, and 0.88, respectively, indicating acceptable Internal consistency reliability and composite reliability (CR) of the scale. The average variance extracted (AVE) ranged between 0.65 and 0.79, and all square root values of the AVE for the three dimensions were higher than their Spearman correlations, indicating the good convergent and discriminant validity.ConculsionThe scale could serve as an evaluation tool for patients' perceptions of doctors' empathy in primary-level medical service settings in Chinese mainland.© 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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