Patients' and physicians' assessments of patients' health in rural Mississippi.

Abstract

A two-week health-appraisal survey of the patients of a rural Mississippi medical clinic during the month of January 1988 revealed that the larger percentage of the patients assessed their individual health status in about the same way that it was assessed by the clinic's staff physicians. The highest dissimilarity between physicians' and patients' assessments of patients' health occurred for the black patients in general and for the black men specifically. Findings of this study indicate a need for increased efforts in health education for rural communities, more research on how rural people assess their own health, and greater knowledge of rural people's health belief models.