Research of opinions and attitudes of Czech citizens to general practitioners

Summary

The Director-General of the WHO M. Chan presents WHO’s opinion that the health system, the backbone of which is primary care and general practitioners (GP) form its basis, brings the best results in health care with the lowest costs and maximum clients’ satisfaction.

A representative sociological research dealing with the Czech Republic (CR) citizens’ attitude to general practitioners was carried out in 2015. In absolute majority of cases (94.1%), the CR citizens express satisfaction with their GPs’ care and the time, which they devote to them during their appointment. Moreover, the absolute majority of cases of the CR citizens (95.9%) were satisfied with nurse´s work in the GP’s surgery. The citizens appreciate that GP’s communication with them is polite and effective focusing directly to the core of the problem. In terms of GP’s experience with differentiation between psychological and physical origin of health complaints, nearly 10% of the citizens feel problems, which can be related to psychosomatic character of these complaints. Great deal of citizens would appreciate if they could make an appointment to see their GP on a particular day and hour. On the contrary, one quarter of the respondents refuses this option and the system of appointments does not suit them. The survey results point out that introducing the gate-keeping system would be met with incomprehension in 51.3% of CR citizens. There is not a significant difference between average monthly costs on medicaments, which are bought over-the-counter by the citizens and a price of medicaments prescribed by GPs. The citizens support an idea that their GP could perform some lab tests (POCT) just in the surgery. Only 4.5% of citizens were against this option. A similar support has a possibility that the GPs could dispense some medicaments in their surgery. Only 7.5% of respondents declined this option. The gained findings will be used in the frame of GPs’ lifelong education and development of primary care in the Czech Republic.

Keywords:
general practitioner – attitudes of people towards GPs – pharmacotherapy – gatekeeping