The Attitudes of Health Professionals to Giving Advice on Fitness to Drive

A multi-method approach was taken that incorporated surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and workshops. It aimed to capture the views of all disciplines of health professional who may be faced with a patient whose fitness to drive may be in doubt, and to this end a wide range of recruiting and sampling techniques were used.

The principal aims of the research were as follows:
• To explore health professionals’ current state of knowledge regarding medical
aspects of fitness to drive;
• To investigate the attitudes and other factors that may influence their decisions on whether to discuss fitness to drive during routine clinical contacts;
• To explore the organisational barriers to the dissemination of up-to-date knowledge in this field, and the obstacles to including advice on fitness to drive as a routine part of consultations;
• To suggest ways of improving medical and other health care personnel’s knowledge and their willingness to give advice to their patients, and indicate how these aims may best be achieved within the organisational context of these professional groups.

In order to achieve these aims, the research project took the form of 10 sub-studies, which, together, examined the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of HCPs and ways of improving the current situation. The individual sub-studies were designed to explore what health professionals know about medical aspects of fitness to drive, what they say they do when faced with a patient who may be unfit to drive and what they actually do when faced with such a patient, for example, under what circumstances patients are actually advised about their fitness to drive.