One in five people avoided a doctor in the first lockdown

One in five people avoided their GP during the first lockdown of the corona epidemic in the spring of 2020. That is what researchers from Erasmus MC in Rotterdam write. in an article published on Tuesday in the scientific journal PLOS Medicine. One in three of the group that did not go to the doctor had complaints that could indicate a serious condition, such as loss of strength in the arms or legs, palpitations and chest pain. The research was done within the long-term epidemiological health study of people in the Rotterdam neighborhood of Ommoord.

In April 2020, nearly 9,000 people were invited to participate in a survey on health, lifestyle and care use. More than 1,100 of the 5,656 people who completed the questionnaire indicated that they had not visited their GP in the two weeks before, or that they had postponed a visit.

A short interview with physician-epidemiologist Silvan Licher and general practitioner-epidemiologist Evelien de Schepper, both authors of the study.

What was the reason that people went to the doctor less often?

Licher: „With such a large group of people, of course, very different reasons play a role. But it seems that a large part of them lived under the assumption that the entire care was overloaded. However, that was a public misconception, because it was very quiet among general practitioners during the first lockdown. So calm that doctors started to worry whether their patients dared to come to the office hours. In addition, many people were afraid of becoming infected during their visit to the doctor.”

What has been the impact on the health of these people?

Licher: „We do not yet know exactly what the health damage has been from not going to the doctor on time. But what we do know is that one-third of the people had serious complaints that needed to be seen the same day, to rule out the possibility that it was a heart attack or stroke.

“With a questionnaire you run the risk that people do not always fill in truthful answers, or forget to report things. In this case, we had permission to also look at the medical records of the participants with the GPs. This allowed us to manually verify whether the answers were actually correct.”

To what extent is this a reflection of the whole of the Netherlands?

Licher: „Ommoord is a suburb of Rotterdam where relatively fewer people with a migration background live than in other urban areas. However, previous research into the burden of chronic diseases in Ommoord showed that our study population is representative of the health situation throughout the Netherlands. Figures from Nivel confirm that about 20 percent fewer people visited their GP during the corona pandemic.”

Many people have now been vaccinated. Did that change the picture?

Licher: “The group avoiding care generally consisted of the elderly, people with chronic conditions, plus anxious or depressed individuals. When new restrictions appear, this is the first group to doubt whether they should go to the doctor. They are very sensitive to the sentiment in society.”

How can you encourage people to continue to see a doctor?

De Schepper: “It is important to emphasize that healthcare is safe to visit and that there is always room for people with health problems. People also often have doubts about what kind of complaints they really should go to a doctor with. For example, there can from thuisarts.nl website be a good resource.

“With a possible new lockdown on the horizon, GPs and the government should once again strongly emphasize that primary care remains accessible to everyone.”

Licher: “There is a lot of media attention for the scaling down of care in hospitals, and rightly so. But we must not lose sight of the fact that good care starts at home, where a GP can respond well to people’s complaints, even before they have a diagnosis.”

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