Factors influencing doctors' awareness of the life problems of middle-aged patients.

Because individuals who deal effectively with life events may be healthier, doctors may need to be aware of the important events in their patients' lives. This study was designed to document the actual level of awareness that 20 community family practitioners had of their middle-aged patients' life events. A total of 116 patients completed a life events questionnaire when they visited their family doctors. The physicians completed a similar questionnaire for each patient. A comparison between the patients' and physicians' responses provided the measure of doctors' awareness. Doctors were found to be aware of approximately 25% of all patients' life events. Awareness was inversely associated with patients' self-reliance and directly associated with age of patients and with those events having a negative effect. The observed level of knowledge may be unacceptably low, in which case physicians must find ways to improve their knowledge. Alternatively, this level of knowledge may be realistic, given that some patients may not need to discuss their life events, particularly self-reliant patients or patients experiencing events that did not affect them negatively. If this is the case, family physicians need to find ways of determining the patients and events for which their knowledge would be helpful.