What Doctors Know and Do About Foodborne Illness: FoodNet’s Physician Surveys

A foodborne infection is only counted if a health care provider diagnoses it correctly and orders the right laboratory test. So to understand the illnesses it tracks, CDC’s FoodNet surveillance network has periodically surveyed physicians in its surveillance area about their knowledge, attitudes and practices.

1996: who gets a stool culture

The first survey, of randomly selected physicians at five FoodNet sites, asked how doctors diagnose acute diarrheal disease. It collected each physician’s specialty, training, time spent in direct patient care, and split between hospital and outpatient work, and focused on the most recent patient they had seen with diarrhea.

Physicians were more likely to order a stool culture for patients who:

• had bloody stools;
• had traveled to a developing country;
• had had diarrhea for more than 3 days; or
• had a fever.

2000: doctors as food safety teachers

The second survey asked physicians about their role as food safety educators for patients. It was limited to doctors in obstetric, oncology and infectious disease clinics. Physicians who considered foodborne disease a serious problem, or who felt patients saw them as a valuable source of food safety advice, were more likely to give patients food safety information.

2009: E. coli and hemolytic uremic syndrome

The third survey went to physicians in primary care, emergency and urgent care, family practice and infectious diseases. It examined what they knew about testing for and treating diarrheal illness caused by Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) — both O157:H7 and non-O157 strains — and about hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which can follow STEC infection. It also asked about giving antibiotics before a cause is known to patients with acute diarrhea, and about laboratory testing for patients with bloody and non-bloody diarrhea.

Publications

• 1996: “Survey of physician diagnostic practices for patients with acute diarrhea: clinical and public health implications”
• 2000: “Physicians as food-safety educators: a practices and perceptions survey”
• 2009: “Assessment of physician knowledge and practices concerning Shiga toxin-producing E. coli infection and enteric illness”

Sources

Based on "Physician Surveys," FoodNet, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.