Related Experiment Videos
[Mandatory notification of communicable diseases: what physicians think]
1Centro de Saúde de Guimarães.
Insights
Family doctors find statutory notification of communicable diseases (SNCD) useful, but under-reporting stems from workload and motivation issues. Doctors working exclusively as civil servants with smaller patient lists showed better SNCD compliance.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
- Healthcare Management
Context:
- Statutory notification of communicable diseases (SNCD) is a key public health measure.
- Understanding family doctors' perspectives on SNCD is crucial for effective disease surveillance.
- Previous research has highlighted challenges in timely and complete disease reporting.
Purpose:
- To assess family doctors' opinions on the utility of SNCD.
- To identify factors influencing family doctors' attitudes towards SNCD.
- To analyze reasons for under-reporting of communicable diseases.
Summary:
- A cross-sectional study surveyed 52 family doctors regarding SNCD utility, reasons for under-reporting, and notification form ease.
- 96% of doctors found SNCD useful, citing excess work/lack of time (30%) and motivation (29%) as primary under-reporting reasons.
- Doctors working exclusively as civil servants and those with smaller patient lists demonstrated significantly better compliance with SNCD.
Impact:
- Findings suggest that while SNCD is valued, systemic issues like workload and motivation impede reporting.
- The study identifies specific physician characteristics (exclusivity, list size) associated with improved reporting attitudes.
- Recommendations for enhancing SNCD compliance may involve addressing workload and improving physician motivation.
Objective:
To find out the opinion of family doctors concerning the statutory notification of communicable diseases (SNCD) and to analyse factors associated to a good attitude towards SNCD.
Setting:
Guimarães Health Centre, Guimarães.
Methods:
Analytical cross-sectional study. Questionnaire survey. The 52 family doctors of the Health Centre were asked to express their opinion on some issues, including the utility of SNCD, reasons for the under-reporting of communicable diseases, up-to-dateness of the list of notifiable conditions, facility of filling in the notification form, and their own attitude towards notification. The variables utility of SNCD and attitude towards notification were then considered together with other variables (including postgraduate time, length of the family doctor's lists of patients, working in exclusivity, and how the degree of general practitioner is obtained).
Results:
The SNCD was considered at least somewhat useful by 96% of the doctors. Thirty percent of the doctors considered excess work and/or lack of time as the main reason for under-reporting, and 29% it attributed to lack of sufficient motivation. The list of notifiable conditions was considered out dated by 46% of the doctors. Thirty eight percent of them considered the multiple notification of a case of disease not inconvenient and 54% stated that they had used it to notify all or almost all of cases they knew. The doctors who worked exclusively as civil servants and who had smaller lists of patients seemed to have a greater compliance regarding notification (p < 0.05).
Conclusions:
The majority of doctors considered the notification useful. They attributed the under-reporting to some conditions that are difficult to change. In this population, the doctors who worked exclusively as civil servants and who had smaller lists of patients showed a more favourable attitude towards reporting notifiable conditions.