Skip Navigation



Family Practice Advance Access published online on October 26, 2009
Family Practice, doi:10.1093/fampra/cmp073
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Hetlevik, O.
Right arrow Articles by Gjesdal, S.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Hetlevik, O.
Right arrow Articles by Gjesdal, S.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Young people and their GP: a register-based study of 1717 Norwegian GPs

Øystein Hetlevik, Kjell Haug and Sturla Gjesdal

Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Bergen, Kalfarveien 31, N-5018 Bergen, Norway

Correspondence to Øystein Hetlevik, Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Bergen, Kalfarveien 31, N-5018 Bergen, Norway; E-mail: oystein.hetlevik{at}isf.uib.no

Received 17 January 2009; Revised 25 September 2009; Accepted 29 September 2009.


  Abstract

Background. Internationally, there has been a call to improve the youth-friendliness of health services. In surveys, 60–90% of young people report having contact with a GP at least once a year. Regular contact with the GP can be assumed to be an indicator of a youth-friendly health service. The aim of the current study was to identify associations between a high consultation rate with young people (15–24 years) on the one hand and GP characteristics, patient list characteristics and practice profiling factors on the other.

Methods. A cross-sectional national register-based study from 2002–04 in Norwegian general practice. Data on 1717 GPs, their practice populations and a sample of 316 773 consultations with young people were used to estimate differences between GPs, using one-way analysis of variance and logistic regression.

Results. The mean annual consultation rate with young people was 1.4 (95% confidence interval 1.4–1.5) and 2.2 (2.1–2.2) for the age groups 15–19 and 20–24, respectively. List characteristics indicating free capacity—a shorter patient list, a growing patient list and a high access for persons not on the patient list—were associated with a high youth consultation rate. Young age of the GP, low educational level among the list population and a high rate of interdisciplinary activity by the GP were also associated with a high youth consultation rate.

Conclusions. GPs seem to assign especially low priority to young people when workload is high or free capacity low. Increased awareness of these mechanisms and greater interdisciplinary cooperation could increase the youth-friendliness of general practice.

Keywords. Family practice, health services accessibility, physician's practice patterns, statistics and numerical data, primary health care, young adult.

Hetlevik Ø, Haug K, Gjesdal S. Young people and their GP: a register-based study of 1717 Norwegian GPs. Family Practice 2009; Pages 1–6 of 6.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.