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A survey of general practitioners' attitudes to older drivers on the New South Wales Central Coast
Author(s) -
Lipski Peter S.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
australasian journal on ageing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1741-6612
pISSN - 1440-6381
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-6612.2002.tb00425.x
Subject(s) - medicine , human factors and ergonomics , older people , suicide prevention , injury prevention , poison control , psychology , medical emergency , family medicine , gerontology
Objective: To investigate the attitudes of General Practitioners to older drivers on the New South Wales Central Coast. Method: Postal survey. Results: 275 General Practitioners (GP's) were surveyed, with a response rate of 173 (63%). 61% of GP's allowed an older driver with mild Alzheimer's disease to still drive a motor vehicle. 21% of GP's would allow the frail, medically unfit driver to still drive with a restricted licence locally if there was no public transport near by. Only 41% of GP's thought they had enough training to make an appropriate medical driver assessments. Only 29% of GP's routinely asked about driving habits and medical fitness to drive in all of their older patients. 55% of GP's felt that there should be another medical body to oversee all medical driver assessments rather than the GP. Conclusions: These survey results suggest that not all GP's are aware of the regulations for medical driver assessments, are not routinely screening older drivers, are not adequately trained in medical driver assessments, allowing medically unfit drivers to continue to drive, are concerned about the consequences of cancelling an older driver's licence and are unhappy in dealing with these issues.