Patients' perceptions of medical urgency: does deprivation matter?

BACKGROUND: Consultation behaviour is recognized as having numerous determinants, but patients' perceptions of medical urgency have been neglected as a variable of potential importance.
OBJECTIVES: We aimed to describe the variation in patients' perceptions of medical urgency, and to investigate the influence of socio-economic deprivation on such perceptions. We also aimed to investigate the association between patients' perceptions of urgency and their perception of doctor availability.
METHODS: We carried out a questionnaire survey (incorporating 10 clinical vignettes) of patients attending one of 17 participating practices during a 1-week study period. A medical urgency score was calculated for each patient, and compared for patients sharing similar characteristics. The setting was West Lothian, Scotland.
RESULTS: Patients' perceptions of medical urgency as measured by the urgency score were normally distributed amongst a sample of 4999 patients attending their GP. Whilst socio-economic deprivation was a significant determinant of perceptions of medical urgency, the effect was small and can probably be discounted as an important variable determining such perceptions. An association was observed between patients' perceptions of doctor availability following a non-urgent consultation request and a heightened sense of medical urgency.
CONCLUSIONS: Further work is required to explain the differences in the population with regard to perceptions of medical urgency, and to examine the association between patients' perceptions of the seriousness of symptoms and the urgency of consultation requests.