A STUDY ON THE PRACTICE VARIATIONS ACCORDING TO PHYSICIAN’S SPECIALTY

Introduction and objective It is well known that physicians who have insufficient clinical experience is very dependent on diagnostic tests and make more prescriptions. A physician’s specialty has powerful influences on his practice pattern. The objective of this study was to examine practice variations according to physician’s specialty in a hospital based family medicine practice. Method We analyzed diagnostic tests and utilization pattern of medications of upper respiratory tract infections (URIs) in outpatient settings. We reviewed the medical records of the patients diagnosed as upper respiratory tract infections visiting outpatient clinics of the Department of Family Medicine of Asan Medical Center (AMC) from March 2013 to December 2013. The percentage of episodes for which laboratory tests, a chest X-ray, and medications were prescribed and the proportion of number of medications were calculated. Chi-squared test was performed to evaluate the difference in the use of diagnostic tests and utilization pattern of URI medications according to physician’s specialty. Results Of the 259 URI episodes identified, Professors tend to use more chest X-ray than do residents and fellows, respectively (P