ABSTRACT
Background: Doctor shopping is defined as the practice of patient seeking multiple health care providers without making efforts to coordinate care or informing physicians of the multiple care givers for the same illness or to procure prescription drugs illicitly. This study was planned to explore the doctor shopping behaviour and its determinants among people with chronic diseases in rural Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu.Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted among patients of chronic diseases residing in Sembakkam village, Kancheepuram District, Tamil Nadu. Data was collected using a pre-tested semi-structured schedule adopted from Agarwal et al will be used.Results: Prevalence of doctor shopping was found to be 73.7% among the study population which is visiting more than one doctor for the same diagnosis. The main reason given by the participants for consulting more than one doctor was consistence of the symptoms (34%) followed by location of the health facility (15.9%) and non-acceptance of the diagnosis (15.5%).Conclusions: Patient education, good interpersonal communication skills, and health system strengthening measures can increase responsiveness of the community toward the health systems and thereby reduce doctor shopping behaviour.
ABSTRACT
Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs) are those infections which the patients acquire during the course of receiving treatment and are not present or incubating at the time of admission. It also includes infections which appear after discharge and occupational infections among healthcare staff. These infections are mostly caused by viral, bacterial or fungal pathogens and the most common types of HAIs include: blood stream infections, pneumonias (e.g. ventilator-associated pneumonia), urinary tract infections and surgical site infections. According to World Health Organization, for every 100 hospitalized patients at any given time, 7 in developed and 10 in developing countries are getting at least one HAI. Many countries lack strong surveillance system on HAIs and it remains a serious problem, which no institution or country can claim to have solved, despite huge efforts.