[The physician and disability certificates: preconceived attitudes and behaviors]

Five attitudes and predicted behaviors characterize the physicians' responses (strategies) to invalidity certificates. These are: 1- scientific objectivation; 2- complicity (meaning: always completing the certificates without objective preoccupations of any kind); 3- socio political (meaning: influenced by the physician's ideas concerning ways the society should consider the non-working people: permissive or repressive); 4- negotiation (implicating a psychobiosocial approach to the patient and the problem); 5- indifference (never completing certificates, referring this role to someone else). Our recent survey (September 1986) including 92 physicians of a General Hospital (Cité de la Santé) in Laval demonstrates a preponderant attitude, the "socio political" one (A3). But, it has no relation to the preponderant predicted behavior which is the negotiation (C4), characterizing a psychobiosocial approach to the patient and the problem. This behavior has been chosen in a statistically significant way. Nevertheless, there is a relation between the attitude A1: scientific objectivation and the corresponding predicted behavior C1: scientific objectivation. Notions of rationability, professionalism and sociable desirability are evoked as explanations of these results.