The determination of to what extent family physicians working in İzmir province use biopsychosocial approach in their daily practices

Objective: Biopsychosocial (BPS) model argues that the state of individual's health is in an interaction with the complex composition of the biological, psychological and social processes. Although, this model is the basic point of view of the family physicians, there is no sufficient data regarding with its reflection to daily clinical practice. One of the major reasons for this is the lack of enough, clear and objective criteria which are widely known and used to measure BPS performance of physicians. The aim of this study is to determine BPS performances of family physicians Method: 40 Family physicians working in primary health care in Izmir participated in the study. Each participant made two consultations consecutively with two simulated patients who previously trained on two scenarios. Audiovisual recordings of these consultations were evaluated by three researchers by using a scale developed by Margalit and colleagues. The participants also evaluated their own performances with the same scale. Results: : 80 patient-physician interviews were evaluated. While the physician participated in the study evaluated their own performance as biopsychosocial; the researchers evaluated the same performance as biomedical (p <0.05). Participants showed mostly a paternalistic approach. There were no differences between two scenarios in terms of participants? and researchers? assessments of biopsychosocial performance. Consultations with longer total durations are more likely to be patient centered (p <0.05). Conclusion: The primary care physicians do not adopt a biopsychosocial approach in their practices. The reason for this may be the lack of education. To increase awareness on this issue; the processing of the issue satisfactorily in the medical school curriculum and, researches and studies on this topic in the future will shed light to physicians' perspective. Keywords: The biopsychosocial approach, the patient-centered clinical method, the family physician.