Assessing physical activity in general practice: a disconnect between clinical practice and public health?

BACKGROUND: GPs comply poorly to public health recommendations to routinely assess their patients' physical activity. The reasons for this disconnect between recommended practice and GPs' actual practice are unclear. AIM: To investigate GPs' perceptions of assessing physical activity, and to explore how GPs assess their patients' physical activity. DESIGN OF THE STUDY: Qualitative study.
SETTING: General practice.
METHOD: Semi-structured interviews were performed with 15 randomly selected southern Tasmanian GPs, with stratification to include GPs with a range of demographic characteristics. Each interview was recorded, transcribed in full, and analysed using an iterative thematic approach to identify major themes.
RESULTS: GPs recognised the importance of assessing physical activity, but rather than assessing every patient, they target at-risk patients and those with conditions likely to benefit from increased physical activity. Depth of assessment and GPs' definition of sufficient physical activity varied according to the clinical and social context of each patient. Major barriers were the time needed to perform an adequate assessment and lack of time to deal with physical inactivity in patients once it was identified.
CONCLUSION: GPs' assessment of physical activity is a complex and highly individualised process that cannot be divorced from the issue of managing physical inactivity once it is identified. Expectations that GPs will assess physical activity levels in all their patients are unlikely to be met. This must be taken into account when developing strategies to improve physical activity assessment in general practice, and should be considered in policy decisions about approaches to take to improve physical activity levels at a population level.