Health care for people with an intellectual disability: General Practitioners' attitudes, and provision of care.

The aim of this study was to investigate general practitioners’ (GPs) beliefs about the importance of addressing nine health care issues for people with intellectual disabilities, and their roles in providing this care. GPs’ current level and intended future level of addressing these health care issues were also determined. Questionnaires were mailed to 912 GPs Australia wide, with a 58% response rate. The vast majority of respondents agreed that the nine issues are important health care issues for people with an intellectual disability. Most respondents also agreed that it is the GPs’ role to facilitate or ensure these health issues are addressed. Although having broad attitudes about their roles, GPs indicated significant deficiencies in their current level of health care provision for many of the health issues. However, they also indicated their intentions to increase the frequency of addressing these health issues in the future as a result of issues raised in previous questions on the questionnaire. This response to simply increasing GPs’awareness of their practice behaviour has a variety of important implications for training and ongoing education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]