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General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany

BACKGROUND: In Germany, there are neither guidelines provided by the medical associations nor a public discussion about general practitioners (GPs) treating their family members. Only few studies on this topic from the primary care setting exist. The aim of this study is to describe GPs’ treatment o...

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Autores principales: Mücke, Natalie Alida, Schmidt, Alexandra, Kersting, Christine, Kalitzkus, Vera, Pentzek, Michael, Wilm, Stefan, Mortsiefer, Achim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8812028/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35172761
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-022-01631-z
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author Mücke, Natalie Alida
Schmidt, Alexandra
Kersting, Christine
Kalitzkus, Vera
Pentzek, Michael
Wilm, Stefan
Mortsiefer, Achim
author_facet Mücke, Natalie Alida
Schmidt, Alexandra
Kersting, Christine
Kalitzkus, Vera
Pentzek, Michael
Wilm, Stefan
Mortsiefer, Achim
author_sort Mücke, Natalie Alida
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In Germany, there are neither guidelines provided by the medical associations nor a public discussion about general practitioners (GPs) treating their family members. Only few studies on this topic from the primary care setting exist. The aim of this study is to describe GPs’ treatment of family members and to generate empirical data on the most common reasons for this. METHODS: In June 2018 we conducted a postal survey among GPs in the North Rhine region of Germany. The questionnaire was developed in a stepwise process including initial expert panels, interviews with GPs, item construction workshops, cognitive pre-tests and pilot testing with 40 questionnaires. The final questionnaire addressed: type and frequency of treatment, documentation and place of treatment, engagement as the official GP as well as reasons for and against the treatment. For data evaluation, descriptive and explorative statistical analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Overall, 393 questionnaires were returned (response rate 39.8%). 96.7% of the GPs had treated at least one family member during the last 12 months. Services that were provided frequently (more than three times in the last 12 months) included the prescription or dispensing of medication (partner 45%, children 37%, parents 43%, partner’s parents 26%), physical examinations (partner 18%, children 24%, parents 25%, partner’s parents 15%), and the arrangement or provision of laboratory tests (partner 14%, children 7%, parents 16%, partner’s parents 9%). Less than one third of the study participants always treated their relatives in their office. Male GPs more often provided care to family members (except children) registered in their practice. Senior male GPs treated their relatives more often than junior female GPs. Family members were most commonly treated for practical reasons. CONCLUSION: The subject of GPs treating their relatives is of high everyday relevance, since nearly all GPs are involved in the treatment of their family members. Frequent at-home treatments and low documentation rates may indicate risks due to deviating from the professional routine.
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spelling pubmed-88120282022-02-03 General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany Mücke, Natalie Alida Schmidt, Alexandra Kersting, Christine Kalitzkus, Vera Pentzek, Michael Wilm, Stefan Mortsiefer, Achim BMC Prim Care Research BACKGROUND: In Germany, there are neither guidelines provided by the medical associations nor a public discussion about general practitioners (GPs) treating their family members. Only few studies on this topic from the primary care setting exist. The aim of this study is to describe GPs’ treatment of family members and to generate empirical data on the most common reasons for this. METHODS: In June 2018 we conducted a postal survey among GPs in the North Rhine region of Germany. The questionnaire was developed in a stepwise process including initial expert panels, interviews with GPs, item construction workshops, cognitive pre-tests and pilot testing with 40 questionnaires. The final questionnaire addressed: type and frequency of treatment, documentation and place of treatment, engagement as the official GP as well as reasons for and against the treatment. For data evaluation, descriptive and explorative statistical analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Overall, 393 questionnaires were returned (response rate 39.8%). 96.7% of the GPs had treated at least one family member during the last 12 months. Services that were provided frequently (more than three times in the last 12 months) included the prescription or dispensing of medication (partner 45%, children 37%, parents 43%, partner’s parents 26%), physical examinations (partner 18%, children 24%, parents 25%, partner’s parents 15%), and the arrangement or provision of laboratory tests (partner 14%, children 7%, parents 16%, partner’s parents 9%). Less than one third of the study participants always treated their relatives in their office. Male GPs more often provided care to family members (except children) registered in their practice. Senior male GPs treated their relatives more often than junior female GPs. Family members were most commonly treated for practical reasons. CONCLUSION: The subject of GPs treating their relatives is of high everyday relevance, since nearly all GPs are involved in the treatment of their family members. Frequent at-home treatments and low documentation rates may indicate risks due to deviating from the professional routine. BioMed Central 2022-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC8812028/ /pubmed/35172761 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-022-01631-z Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://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
Mücke, Natalie Alida
Schmidt, Alexandra
Kersting, Christine
Kalitzkus, Vera
Pentzek, Michael
Wilm, Stefan
Mortsiefer, Achim
General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title_full General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title_fullStr General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title_full_unstemmed General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title_short General practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in Germany
title_sort general practitioners treating their own family members: a cross-sectional survey in germany
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8812028/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35172761
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-022-01631-z
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