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Israeli general practitioners' dissatisfaction with their own primary healthcare
Galia Zacay1,2, Fabienne Hershkowitz Sikron1, Anthony David Heymann1,2
1Department of Family Medicine, Meuhedet Health Maintenance Organization, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Background:
Many physicians treat themselves despite established guidelines against such practice.
Aims:
To examine whether general practitioners (GPs) are satisfied with their personal primary care and how this could be improved.
Methods:
We sent a questionnaire to GPs in Israel. We examined the gap between preference to use formal medical care and use in practice, satisfaction with physicians' primary healthcare, self-prescribing and ways to improve physician access to care.
Results:
There were 203 respondents (response rate 203/985; 21%). Sixty-one per cent reported not having a GP. Older respondents were less likely to have their own GP. Thirty-seven per cent of physicians reported receiving less formal medical care than they desired. This gap was higher in those reporting self-prescription of benzodiazepines and anti-depressants (P < 0.05) and was significantly associated with dissatisfaction with primary healthcare. Odds for being satisfied with personal care was reduced by more than 85% in GPs who reported receiving less formal medical care than they desired (odds ratio 0.146; 95% confidence interval 0.064-0.333).
Conclusions:
Our findings inform the profile of physician self-treatment and the dissatisfaction associated with it. Dissatisfaction was associated with a gap between desired and actual care rather than with having or not having a personal GP. There was no consensus regarding what would assist physicians to access GPs.