Self-evaluation of health: Elder outpatients, general practitioner and geriatric assessment

Summary lf-evaluation of health status, as well as the well documented increasing prevalence of physical diseases and cognitive or affective disorders, are the most significant outcomes of health programs for elders. As the self-evaluation is less examined, with a sample of 100 elderly outpatients (48 males, 52 females, age range: 66–89 years) attending general practitioner (GP) offices, this study aimed to evaluate the pattern of self-appraisal health, the degree of congruence between patient appraisal and GP reports on both health status and drug protocols, by means of a 12-items general health questionnaire (GHQ). In the group of dissatisfied patients, the relationships between appraisals and the outcomes of psychometric cognitive and affective evaluations were assayed. The findings indicate that more than 1/3 of the patients were unsatisfied with their health status, regardless of social and demographic conditions, and inconsistently with their GP reports. The latter proved to be correlated only with positive appraisals of patients. The negative evaluation of patients correlated with both affective symptoms collected by means of psychometric tests and GP reports on psychiatric disorders. The latter were also correlated with cognitive performance scores, which did not correlate with the patientsʹ appraisals. This suggests that the high prevalence of health status insatisfaction among elders requires from the GP a more in-depth consideration and assessment with selected screening tools.