Obstacles to preventive intervention. Do physicians' health habits and mind-set towards preventive care play any role?

OBJECTIVE To investigate the virtual importance of identified barriers to preventive interventions and to explore the association between physicians' characteristics and their attitudes towards prevention. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 182 randomly selected family and general physicians (164/182=90% response rate) from total of 385 general physicians from 5 health sectors of Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2005. A pre-tested questionnaire asking physicians to rate the general importance of 8 preventive health strategies was used. RESULTS The ranking of different preventive intervention varies from 124 (75.6%) for colorectal cancer screening to 155 (94.5%) for blood pressure control. Lack of time was rated an important barrier by 100 (61%) physicians, and lack of patient interest by 125 (76.2%) of physicians. There were 4 characteristics of physicians, which predicted negative attitudes toward prevention, sedentary lifestyle (odds ratio [OR] = 3.4, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-11.1), lack of awareness of their own blood pressure (OR = 2.0, 95% CI, 1.0-3.9), lack of training (OR=2.2, 95% CI, 1.5-2.9), and lack of evidence of benefits (OR=1.98, 95% CI, 1.7-3.9). CONCLUSION The influence of physicians' own health behaviors and the importance of preventive intervention barriers, indicates a need for development of an approach to reduce the dominance of risky behavior.