Abstract
BackgroundIn order for patients to adhere to advice, provided by family doctors, they must be able to recall it afterwards. However, several studies have shown that most patients do not fully understand or memorize it. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of demographic characteristics, education, amount of given advice and the time between consultations on recalled advice.MethodsA prospective survey, lasting 30 months, was conducted in an urban family practice in Slovenia. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify the risk factors for poorer recall.Results250 patients (87.7% response rate) received at least one and up to four pieces of advice (2.4 ± 0.8). A follow-up consultation took place at 47.4 ± 35.2 days. The determinants of better recall were high school (OR 0.4, 95% CI 0.15-0.99, p = 0.049) and college education (OR 0.3, 95% CI 0.10-1.00, p = 0.050), while worse recall was determined by number of given instructions three or four (OR 26.1, 95% CI 3.15-215.24, p = 0.002; OR 56.8, 95% CI 5.91-546.12, p < 0.001, respectively) and re-test interval: 15-30 days (OR 3.3, 95% CI 1.06-10.13, p = 0.040), 31-60 days (OR 3.2, 95% CI 1.28-8.07, p = 0.013) and more than 60 days (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.05-6.02, p = 0.038).ConclusionsEducation was an important determinant factor and warrants further study. Patients should be given no more than one or two instructions in a consultation. When more is needed, the follow-up should be within the next 14 days, and would be of a greater benefit to higher educated patients.
Highlights
In order for patients to adhere to advice, provided by family doctors, they must be able to recall it afterwards
The inclusion criteria were set in accordance with the results of representative data on Slovenian General practitioners’ (GP)’ performance [19], which reported that the majority (65.9%) of patients are subjected to a physical examination and have an average of 1.57 ± 0.87 health problems per consultation
The majority of patients had completed high school education (148 (59.2%)) with 69 (27.6%) patients having college or a university education, while 33 (13.2%) had only primary school
Summary
In order for patients to adhere to advice, provided by family doctors, they must be able to recall it afterwards. Several studies have shown that most patients do not fully understand or memorize it. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of demographic characteristics, education, amount of given advice and the time between consultations on recalled advice. The majority of patients are older, and the incidence of multi-morbidity in Slovenia is increasing [1]. In Canada, one study showed that 9 out of 10 patients had more than 1 chronic condition [2]. Recent data on multi-morbidity in England [3] revealed that 16% of patients had more than one chronic condition, accounting for 32% of all consultations. 58% of people had multi-morbidity and they accounted for 78% of consultations [3]
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