ABSTRACT
Non-physician personnel are trained increasingly to handle many of the wide range of problems presented to primary care doctors. The data reported are based on a survey of the public, using a randomly selected sample from three different sized Midwest communities during spring, 1976. The issue of the expanded use of non-physicians in primary care is raised in several contexts. An opportunity to examine public response to non-physicians became available in connection with a study primarily concerned with the examination of the authority relationship between physicians and the public. The authority of physicians, and thereby the legitimation of the definition of the tasks they consider a part of their role, rests in the expectation that they have greater knowledge and expertise than do other health personnel or patients. The belief in physicians' competence or the belief in doctors' personal concern for patients was assessed by the scale created originally by S. J. Zyzanski and colleagues.
