• Br J Gen Pract · Jul 2009

    Exploring the impact of patient views on 'appropriate' use of services and help seeking: a mixed method study.

    • Joy Adamson, Yoav Ben-Shlomo, Nish Chaturvedi, and Jenny Donovan.
    • Department of Health Sciences, University of York, Heslington, York. ja14@york.ac.uk
    • Br J Gen Pract. 2009 Jul 1; 59 (564): e226e233e226-33.

    BackgroundThere are commonly-held views relating to what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate use of finite NHS resources. However, very little is known about how and why such views have an impact on consultation patterns.AimTo quantify the prevalence of opinion on whether people use health services unnecessarily within primary care and accident and emergency (A&E) in order to examine the impact of these views on help-seeking behaviour.Design Of StudyA mixed method study utilising cross-sectional questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews.SettingA primary care practice in South West England, UK.MethodResponders to the questionnaire survey were drawn from a random sample of individuals, stratified by sex, selected from one practice in the UK (n = 911). The qualitative sample (n = 22) were purposefully selected from the same general practice.ResultsThe quantitative data suggest that the majority of people believe individuals utilise either GP or A&E services inappropriately (65.6%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 62.4 to 68.7). However, strong views relating to this inappropriate healthcare use were not associated with reported seeking of immediate care (odds ratio [OR] = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.66 to 1.46 for 'lump' vignette). Responders tend to consider other people as time wasters, but not themselves. Individuals' generally describe clear rationales for help seeking, even for seemingly trivial symptoms and anxiety level was strongly predictive of health-seeking behaviour (OR = 2.88; 95% CI = 1.98 to 4.19 for lump vignette).ConclusionPerceptions that individuals' use health services inappropriately are unlikely to explain differences in help-seeking behaviours. The findings suggest that people do not take the decision to consult health services lightly and rationalise why their behaviour is not time wasting.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…