[Factors influencing general practitioners and specialists of general practice to declare in favor of accepting the role of family doctors].

INTRODUCTION

Protection and promotion of health of an individual, family and society as the whole depends on the organization and efficiency of the public health service. Modern health service is focused on the health prevention and improvement of the family which is the basic unit of society. The life cycle of the family indicates crisis related to development and underdevelopment as well as some expected and unexpected life situations and this is very important when discussing about many somatic and mental diseases.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of our project which included 473 specialists of general practice and 355 general practitioners was to determine the factors which influence the positive attitude of the general practitioners about becoming a family doctor.

METHOD

A total of 828 doctors in Serbia were required to answer the set of eight questions. Statistical analysis included Pearson chi square test with contingency tables and logistic regression, while dependent variable was doctor's attitude about becoming a family doctor in a certain situation. The answer 'no' or 'I don't know' was scored 1 point and the 'yes' answer was graded 2 points. Eight questions mentioned above were independent variables.

RESULTS

Logistic model accounting for 79.3% of dependent variable was obtained. Positive attitude of doctors was very much affected by family problems and great majority of these doctors were specialists of general practice. Other questions were not so important for our results.

CONCLUSION

Specialists of general practice, regardless of their working experience and years of practice, gave significantly more positive answers, and the situation was quite opposite with general practitioners. Family medicine supported by modern information systems provides ideal model of comprehensive and complete health prevention with high level of rationalism, quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.