The utilization of, and the attitudes of the public to, general practitioner services : a geographical study in West Glamorgan

• Main Author: Phillips, David R.
• Published: Swansea University 1978
• Subjects: 610.7343
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.638526

This thesis is a study of public attitudes to and utilisation of general practitioner medical services in West Glamorgan, A review was undertaken of geographical and social scientific approaches to the study of health service consumer behaviour and recent trends in the organisation of primary medical care were examined. These were identified as chiefly the centralisation of general practitioners into group practices with various administrative arrangements. An approach combining social geographic and social scientific methods was developed to investigate use of and attitudes to general practitioner services in the study area. An areal sampling framework based upon census data analysed by principal components analysis was employed to designate areas of known social composition with access to defined general practice facilities. In the empirical-behavioural section of the study, four pairs of survey sites were chosen and approximately fifty questionnaires conducted in each site. In three areas, high and low status sites were juxtaposed to examine the influences upon service utilisation behaviour of differences in social status and in the fourth area, two low status sites at different distances from surgery were chosen to examine the effects of accessibility. The effects of other factors identified during the literature review were also investigated, these being the age of respondents, personal mobility and previous residence. It was recognised that utilisation behaviour has spatial aspects, relating to which facility is used and behavioural aspects, relating to how frequently general practitioner services are used. Public attitudes to the distance and journey for medical care, to the recent developments in primary medical care and to the physician's 'affective behaviour' were also examined to determine levels of satisfaction with, and any differential class attitudes to, the service. Finally, certain implications of the research for planning of general practitioner services were developed.