Trait anxiety and self-rated health as predictor variables of medical attention in spanish population

Understanding the factors that affect medical service use is a relevant task with a view to providing improved health services. The goal of the present study was to analyze the effect of self-rated health and trait anxiety in the prediction of the general prevalence of visits to a doctor and of frequent attenders (FAs) in a sample of Spanish population. The participants, 1001 adults randomly selected from Spanish population, reported the number of visits to primary care and specialized attention services during the past year. The general prevalence of visits was 70.7%, with a mean of 4.11 visits per year. Good self-rated health was associated with a lower prevalence of visits, whereas participants with high trait anxiety were 2.26 times as likely to use health services. With regard to FAs, worse self-rated health and high trait anxiety were significant predictors of visits to a doctor, even after controlling for the effect of diverse sociodemographic variables. Our results add evidence of the significance of psychological variables when accounting for the use of medical services and reveal the importance of attending to the psychological needs of users who frequently visit a doctor.