Centre for Policy on Ageing



Primary care for elderly people — why do doctors find it so hard?
Author(s)	Wendy L Adams, Helen E McIlvain, Naomi L Lacy
Journal title	The Gerontologist, vol 42, no 6, December 2002
Pages	pp 835-842
Keywords	General practice ; General practitioners ; Management [care] ; Social interaction ; Patients ; United States of America.
Annotation	Many primary care physicians find caring for older patients difficult. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 20 primary care physicians in the vicinity of Omaha, Nebraska. A multidisciplinary team used an iterative approach based on grounded theory to analyse the content of the interviews and to develop a conceptual model of the difficulty. Three major areas of difficulty emerged: medical complexity and chronicity; personal and interpersonal challenges; and administrative burden. The greatest challenge occurred when difficulty in more than one area was present. Contextual conditions - such as the practice environment and physician's training and personal values - shaped the experience of providing care and how difficult it seemed. Much of the difficulty participants experienced could be facilitated by changes in the healthcare delivery system and in medical education. The voices of these physicians and the model resulting from the analysis can inform such change. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-030305209 A
Classmark	L5: QT6: QA: TMA: LF: 7T
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.