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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Primary care physicians' attitudes towards cognitive screening
— findings from a national postal survey | | Author(s) | Panayiotis Iracleous, Jason Xin Nie, C Shawn Tracy |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 25, no 1, January 2010 |
| Pages | pp 23-29 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/gps doi: 10.1002/gps.2293 |
| Keywords | Cognitive processes ; Screening ; Attitude ; General practitioners ; Social surveys ; Canada. |
| Annotation | The objectives of this paper are: to determine Canadian family physicians' attitudes towards cognitive screening; to identify what cognitive screening tools are being used; to investigate how they rate these tools' effectiveness; and to identify the attributes of an ideal cognitive screening tool for the primary care setting. Postal survey questionnaires were sent to a random sample of 249 practising members of the College of Family Physicians of Canada; the response rate was 52%. The majority of physicians Agreed or Strongly Agreed that cognitive impairment assessment is important in primary care (89%), and Disagreed or Strongly Disagreed that it should be left to specialists (92%). However, 35% were undecided when asked if assessment in primary care would lead to better outcomes. The most frequently used assessment tools were Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE), Clock Drawing, Delayed Word Recall, Standardized MMSE and Alternating Sequences, but were mainly rated as only Good in terms of perceived effectiveness. Validity/accuracy was identified as the top attribute of an ideal screening tool. Female physicians were more likely to have a positive attitude towards cognitive assessment. Younger physicians, those in group practices, or those with either 20% and less or 61-80% of elderly patients in their practice indicated a shorter ideal time to administer a cognitive screening tool. Despite general agreement that primary care physicians have an important role in cognitive screening, there is less agreement that it leads to better outcomes. The development of a superior screening tool to be used in the primary care setting is needed. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100309203 A |
| Classmark | DA: 3V: DP: QT6: 3F: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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