General practitioners' knowledge of their patients' socioeconomic data andtheir ability to identify vulnerable groups

Objective - To explore general practitioners' knowledge of their patients' socioeconomic data and their ability to identify vulnerable groups. Design - A multipractice survey of consecutive adult patients consulting ge neral practitioners during one regular workday. Doctors and patients indepe ndently completed mirrored questionnaires. Setting - A geographically defined population of patients and doctors in Bu skerud county, Norway. Subjects - 1401 patients attending 89 general practitioners during the last two weeks of March 1995. Main outcome measures - The doctors' ability to state the patients' socioec onomic situation correctly using sensitivity and specificity. Results for p atients scarcely and well known to the doctors are compared. Results - Sensitivity ranged from 0.93 for work as main income source to 0. 04 for not having WC/bathroom inside the dwelling. Specificity ranged from 1.00 for several factors to 0.73 for low educational level. Information on household composition and income source was correct for more than half of p atients scarcely known to the doctors. Conclusions - General practitioners' knowledge of various socioeconomic dat a of their patients differs substantially and are collected at different st ages in the relationship. Among socioeconomic data defining vulnerable grou ps, the patients' self-perceived work disability is the variable general pr actitioners are best at evaluating.