title: An exploratory study of patient attitudes towards symptom reporting in a primary care setting. Benefits for medical consultation and syndromic surveillance?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to investigate people's attitude towards providing symptom information electronically before a consultation. Specific areas investigated include a) attitudes and experiences with regards to acquisition of information related to symptoms, b) attitudes towards computer based communication of symptoms to the general practitioner and how they preferred to carry out such reporting, and c) attitudes towards storage, use and presentation of symptom-data in general, and particularly in a symptom based surveillance setting.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data was collected from 83 respondents by use of convenience sampling.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The respondents were familiar with using the Internet for health purposes, such as acquisition of information related to their symptoms prior to a consultation. The majority of respondents had a positive attitude towards providing information about their symptoms to the general practitioner's office as soon as possible after falling ill. Over half of the respondents preferred to use e-mail or a web-interface to perform this task. Eighty four percent were willing to have their symptom data stored in their EPR and 76 percent agreed that the general practitioner might access the symptoms together with the prevalence of matching diseases in order to assist the diagnostic process during the next consultation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results of this study support the applicability of electronically mediated pre-consultation systems both for improving primary care consultation and for use in symptom based surveillance, including real-time surveillance.
authors: Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine, University Hospital of North Norway, 9038 Tromsø, Norway. monika.johansen@telemed.no
authors: M A
authors: MA
authors: Johansen
authors: G
authors: G
authors: Berntsen
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Shrestha
authors: J G
authors: JG
authors: Bellika
authors: J-A K
authors: JA
authors: Johnsen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D003142:Communication; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D005791:Patient Care; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011320:Primary Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D017216:Telemedicine; D055815:Young Adult