Teenagers and their family practitioner: matching between their reasons for encounter

The aim of this study was to analyse the reasons for encounter of teenagers in family practice and to compare them with the reasons recorded by their family practitioner (FP).

This cross-sectional study involved 91 FPs from the Paris area and from the French-speaking part of Belgium. The teenagers (12-17 years old) filled in an auto-administered questionnaire in the waiting room of their FP during a 1-week period. The doctor independently filled in a similar form after the consultation. Both questionnaires were matched afterwards to assess the concordance between the reasons for encounter recorded by the young patient and by his/her FP.

More than 100 reasons for encounter were given by 457 teenagers. The majority of the complaints were respiratory (26%), general health (18.5%), osteoarticular (15%), digestive (11%) and neurological problems (9.5%). Gender did not influence the nature of the complaints, but age played a role. The older teenagers had more respiratory complaints, general and pregnancy/contraception problems. In 80% of the cases, the ailments listed by the teenagers were picked up by the practitioner. In 18% of the consultations, the FP recorded problems that had not been noted by the patient.

Many common and a few serious although frequent youth problems were found among the reasons for encounter. Most of them were recorded by the practitioner. Time and communication skills are important to give the opportunity to the teenager to share sensitive topics with his/her FP.