Communication with general practitioners: a survey of spinal cord injury physicians’ perspectives

Study design An online questionnaire. Objectives To gauge spinal cord injury (SCI) specialists’ assessment of their communications with general practitioners (GPs). To determine whether economic or health-care system-related factors enhance or inhibit such communication. Setting A collaboration of co-authors from a health-care system. Methods An online survey interrogating a number of aspects of communication between SCI specialists and GPs was developed, distributed, and made available for 4 months. Responses were analyzed for the entire cohort then according to descriptions of participants’ home nations’ economies and the type of health-care delivery systems in which they work. Results A total of 88 responses were submitted. The majority (64%) were from nations with developed economies, a plurality (47.1%) were from countries that offer universal health coverage, and half used a combination of paper and electronic health records. A majority of respondents (61.8%) reported routinely communicating with their patients’ GPs, but most (53.4%) rated those communications as only “fair”. The most commonly listed barriers to communication with GPs were lack of time (46.3%) and a perceived lack of receptivity by GPs (26.9%). Nearly all respondents (91.6%) believed that the care they provide would be enhanced by improved communication with GPs. Participants who used electronic means of communication were more likely to communicate with GPs and to describe those interactions as “positive”. Conclusions Although there are a number of barriers to communication between SCI specialists and GPs, most SCI specialists are eager for such inter-physician communication and believe it would enhance their care they deliver.