NEW-ZEALAND GENERAL-PRACTICE COMPUTERIZATION - ATTITUDES AND REPORTEDBEHAVIOR

Aims. To gather information from general practitioners regarding aspec ts of computerisation including whether certain tasks should be comput erised and whether those tasks were in fact computerised at their prac tice. Methods. Five hundred general practitioners randomly selected th roughout New Zealand were sent a postal survey in May 1995. Results we re then collated and analysed. Results. The response rate was 54% (268 ). Computerisation is becoming a necessity according to 85% of respond ers and a computer was used for at least one task by 84% of doctors. C omputer use during consultation interfered unduly with doctor-patient communication according to 43% of responders. Privacy issues had not b een dealt with adequately for 33% of responders. The five most frequen tly computerised tasks were: maintaining an age-sex register (81% of r esponders), recalls (80%), administration (77%), making appointments ( 50%) and word processing (49%). The number of doctors in a practice an d responders' RNZCGP membership status appeared predictive of task com puterisation. Responders' gender, year of graduation and their members hip on the Indicative General Practitioners Register were not statisti cally significant factors for determining attitudinal and behavioural responses. Conclusions. The low response rate limits generalisation bu t the trends in the results are important. Reported tasks with greates t potential for computerisation were doctor education; checking drug i nteractions / contraindications; patient education; tasks relating to interfacing with laboratories; and database enquires of patients. Sign ificant concerns among responders were perceived interference with doc tor patient communication and privacy issues.