Attitudes of patients toward family care in a family practice group.

There is little information documenting the extent to which the ideal of whole family care is represented in the real world of family practice. A previous study of a suburban family practice group revealed that only 28 percent of families obtained whole family care from a single physician. Interviews were conducted on a sample of 97 of these patients in an effort to gain insights into the factors influencing the choice of a single physician or more than one physician providing their health care. There were no significant differences between same-physician and different-physician families with respect to demographic factors or attitudes toward physician characteristics and family care. Most families had no insights into the potential value of having a single physician for the whole family; indeed, only one family specifically selected a single physician with the belief that it would thereby gain better care. If the observations reported here are representative of the situation at large in the country, family physicians have an important task ahead in patient education.