Patients' expectations of the family physician in health promotion.

This study evaluated patients' perceptions of the family practice physician's role in providing health promotion services. We distributed a questionnaire to a convenience sample of 450 patients (mean age = 40.4 years, SD = 15.8); 382 responded, yielding an 85% response rate. At least 70% of the respondents believed physicians should counsel all patients concerning yearly Pap smears, breast self-exams, and smoking cessation. A sizeable minority believed physicians should teach sex education to teens (41%), discuss social support systems with patients (41%), and discuss home-safety issues with patients (42%). The topics patients least wanted physicians to discuss were financial problems (32%) and seat-belt usage (31%). These patients thought physicians should refer them to other professionals for dental care (33%), marital problems (21%), and financial problems (20%). At least half of the respondents thought physicians should help in the following areas only if requested to do so by the patient: sexual problems (58%), sleeping difficulties (54%), and marital problems (53%). Chi-square analyses were conducted to examine differences in beliefs based on age, sex, educational level, and preventive health orientation of the respondent. We found significant differences based upon these demographic variables; however, interaction effects among the demographic variables also exist.