Patient-doctor Concordance in Elderly Women’s Self-reported Health and Medical Records

Summary

Objectives: To compare the chronic diseases mentioned by elderly women in an interview study with those documented in their respective medical records.

Methods: The prevalence of positive diagnoses, overall agreement, and the kappa-coefficient were calculated for each group of diagnoses.

Results: The lowest overall agreement was observed for psychiatric diseases, followed by diseases of the gastrointestinal system. Poor chance-adjusted agreement was found concerning diseases of the gastrointestinal system and diseases of the skin.

Conclusions: The results suggest that a main reason for discordance was that the elderly women feared »losing face« by reporting some diseases.

Keywords

Diagnosis - women - medical records - patients - medical decision making

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