Reasons for visiting Polish primary care practices by patients aged 18-44 years: the largest emigrating age group

Abstract

Over 3% of the entire Polish population migrate for a job within the European Union, most are aged 18-44 years. The main destinations are Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland. Immigration is connected with the use of many public services, including healthcare services. Assuming Polish immigrants require medical consultations in the countries they reside in, the authors have analysed the reasons for patients' visits to general practitioners (GPs) in Poland in order to predict possible reasons why Polish patients living abroad may make appointments with GPs in other countries. Data from 22,769 visits to GP practices between June 2005 and May 2006 by Polish patients aged 18-44 years were collected electronically. Age was categorised into three groups (18-24, 25-4 and 35-44 years) and the reason for the visit was categorised according to the ICD 10 coding system. Among the 12,535 patients registered with GPs, 73.1% of women and 68.6% of men required consultations during the year the study was conducted. The highest percentage of visits was recorded for women aged 35-44 years, while men of the same age were the least likely to visit a GP. The mean number of visits per patient ranged from 1.89 for men aged 25-34 years to 3.11 for women aged 35-44 years. The means were similar for 18- to 24-year-old men and women. Women aged 35-44 years had a higher mean number of visits compared with women aged 18-4 years, whereas the opposite was true for men. The analysis of reasons for visits within the age groups indicated that the percentage of appointments for respiratory problems and general and unspecified problems dropped by more than half from the 18-24-year-olds to the 35-44-years-olds, while visits for musculosceletal, cardiovascular, and mental and behavioural problems increased by a factor of four. The presented results intend to enable healthcare services meet Polish immigrants' healthcare needs.

Understanding how Eastern European migrants use and experience UK health services: a systematic scoping review

“…Musculoskeletal pain was also common overall (12.6% of visits), especially among 25-34 and 35-44 year-olds. The reasons for visiting the GP were not significantly associated with age [31].…”

“…Four of these were from the programme of work relating to risktaking sexual behaviour among Eastern European men [22][23][24][25]. Of the remaining nine publications, five focused on maternal health [26][27][28][29][30], two related to primary care [31,32], one was a study on the health of Eastern European children [33], while one study examined ED use among Polish migrant workers [34]. We did not focus on the type of study or intervention so this information was not charted.…”

“…All the quantitative studies included were crosssectional [22][23][24][25][26]31]. The Bray study, because it was a single case study, did not adjust for confounding factors [26].…”

“…Four studies met all of the criteria on the JBI checklist [22][23][24][25] but some did not meet some key conditions (Table S4). One study did not focus on any specific condition so did not meet the checklist requirement for measuring the condition [31].…”

“…The most commonly cited, often linked, barriers to accessing and using healthcare for Eastern European migrants in the UK were limited understanding of the way the NHS worked [28,29,31,34] and language barriers [28,29,31,33,34]. Limited language skills, alongside limited provision of information in their native language, further complicated the process of accessing and using healthcare [30,33].…”