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The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine

BACKGROUND: Informal medicine, entailing undocumented medical advice, has been described in diverse medical disciplines and geographical regions. We assessed the current prevalence and characteristics of informal medical consulting, the reasons physicians provide it, and their attitudes toward it. M...

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Autores principales: Amran, Menashe Meni, Kopit, Avital Bilitzky, Kranc, Hannan Ariel, Peleg, Roni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7860190/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33535980
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-020-01362-z
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author Amran, Menashe Meni
Kopit, Avital Bilitzky
Kranc, Hannan Ariel
Peleg, Roni
author_facet Amran, Menashe Meni
Kopit, Avital Bilitzky
Kranc, Hannan Ariel
Peleg, Roni
author_sort Amran, Menashe Meni
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Informal medicine, entailing undocumented medical advice, has been described in diverse medical disciplines and geographical regions. We assessed the current prevalence and characteristics of informal medical consulting, the reasons physicians provide it, and their attitudes toward it. METHODS: We conducted a survey among family physicians in Israel, a country with a national health insurance system. A questionnaire was emailed to all primary care physicians in the two largest HMOs in southern Israel. Fifteen questions addressed the prevalence, practice and attitudes to informal medical consulting. Ten questions assessed demographics and professional experience. RESULTS: Of 143 respondents (mean age 41 years), 55% were women. Ninety-five percent of the respondents reported requesting informal medical consulting from other physicians. Fifty-four percent reported often providing informal consulting to family and friends; and an additional 27% reported doing so under exceptional circumstances. The main reasons given for informal consulting requests were availability and accessibility (81% of respondents), and not financial savings. Only 17.5% stated being in favor of informal consulting for family and friends. Only 11% expressed feeling satisfaction after providing such consultation; 49% expressed discomfort. Sixty-six percent thought a position paper on informal consulting to family and friends is needed. CONCLUSIONS: Our survey of primary care physicians shows very frequent informal medical consulting, despite high dissatisfaction with such, and an interest in receiving guidelines on this practice. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-020-01362-z.
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spelling pubmed-78601902021-02-05 The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine Amran, Menashe Meni Kopit, Avital Bilitzky Kranc, Hannan Ariel Peleg, Roni BMC Fam Pract Research Article BACKGROUND: Informal medicine, entailing undocumented medical advice, has been described in diverse medical disciplines and geographical regions. We assessed the current prevalence and characteristics of informal medical consulting, the reasons physicians provide it, and their attitudes toward it. METHODS: We conducted a survey among family physicians in Israel, a country with a national health insurance system. A questionnaire was emailed to all primary care physicians in the two largest HMOs in southern Israel. Fifteen questions addressed the prevalence, practice and attitudes to informal medical consulting. Ten questions assessed demographics and professional experience. RESULTS: Of 143 respondents (mean age 41 years), 55% were women. Ninety-five percent of the respondents reported requesting informal medical consulting from other physicians. Fifty-four percent reported often providing informal consulting to family and friends; and an additional 27% reported doing so under exceptional circumstances. The main reasons given for informal consulting requests were availability and accessibility (81% of respondents), and not financial savings. Only 17.5% stated being in favor of informal consulting for family and friends. Only 11% expressed feeling satisfaction after providing such consultation; 49% expressed discomfort. Sixty-six percent thought a position paper on informal consulting to family and friends is needed. CONCLUSIONS: Our survey of primary care physicians shows very frequent informal medical consulting, despite high dissatisfaction with such, and an interest in receiving guidelines on this practice. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-020-01362-z. BioMed Central 2021-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7860190/ /pubmed/33535980 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-020-01362-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Amran, Menashe Meni
Kopit, Avital Bilitzky
Kranc, Hannan Ariel
Peleg, Roni
The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title_full The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title_fullStr The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title_full_unstemmed The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title_short The prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
title_sort prevalence, reasons and attitudes for the practice of informal medicine
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7860190/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33535980
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-020-01362-z
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