Table 2.
Clinical details or history that GPs reported would make them think about wider public health implications and which factors when prompted in the question they specifically asked about
| History, symptom, or sign |
Open question Free text (n = 463)
|
Closed question with tick boxes (n = 472)
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Would prompt to consider public health issues, % | Routinely ask the patient, % | Record only if patient volunteers information, % | Neither ask nor record, % | |
| Query food poisoning/food-related | 58 | 90a | NA | NA |
| Others ill/outbreak | 49 | 92 | 4 | 5 |
| Contact with known positive patient | 12 | 77 | 14 | 10 |
| Food handler/worker | 47 | 71 | 24 | 5 |
| Occupation or occupational risk | 25 | 71 | 24 | 5 |
| Lives or works in care home | 23 | 48 | 40 | 12 |
| Child/adult working in/attending nursery school | 19 | 40 | 48 | 13 |
| Overseas travel | 19 | NA | NA | NA |
| Recent hospitalisation | 15 | NA | NA | NA |
| Query Clostridium difficile | 8 | NA | NA | NA |
| Contact with farm or animals | 4 | 12 | 63 | 25 |
| Prolonged diarrhoea | 3 | NA | NA | NA |
| Exposure to untreated water | 2 | NA | NA | NA |
| Difficulty washing hands/disability | NA | 1 | 60 | 39 |
| Patient is a healthcare worker | 16 | 50 | 35 | 15 |
NA = Not applicable as not listed in the closed question.
a
Only 470 GPs answered this question.