Family doctors and health promotion: Do we practise what we preach?

Introduction: A survey on ‘Attitudes and Knowledge of General Practitioners (GPs) in Prevention and Health Promotion’ was carried out in 2000 by EUROPREV (European Network for Prevention and Health Promotion in General Practice / Family Medicine). Method: All local general practitioners (GPs) known to the Malta College of Family Doctors were mailed a questionnaire to elicit beliefs and attitudes in practice, possible barriers in implementing preventive activities, and their personal health behaviour. Results: The response rate was 50% (156 replies out of 313). A difference was found between GPs’ beliefs that certain preventive and health promotion activities should be done and their actually doing them in clinical practice. Forty-nine percent found some or great difficulty in carrying out such activities, mainly due to heavy workload and lack of time, problems in patients’ accessibility to these activities, and patients’ doubts about their effectiveness. Discrepancies were revealed between GPs’ health promotion beliefs and their own personal behaviour. Discussion: As this study is based on GPs’ self-reporting of activities, more objective evidence is needed through audit of properly-kept medical records. A practical protocol of health promotion activities needs to be devised for, and distributed to, family doctors. Health promotion activities may be facilitated by reduction of doctors’ workload through patient registration and an appointment system. As doctors seem to prefer ordering investigations to giving verbal advice, other healthcare professionals could provide the latter. GPs should set an example to their patients by adopting a healthy lifestyle to reinforce their advice regarding health promotion.