ABSTRACT
Although the second part of this book is about doctors, particularly general practitioners, and their relationships with, and knowledge of, their elderly patients, the major focus is still the prescribed medicines that elderly people take. So in looking at the relationship between elderly patients and their general practitioners our main interest is in how this relates to the medicine taking and the medicine prescribing habits of the two protagonists. The first part of the chapter looks at the relationship from the viewpoint of the elderly people, the second from the viewpoint of the doctors. In the first part the aspects of the relationship that we explore are frequency of consultation, home visiting, the length of time they had been with their doctor, and how well they knew him or her, their views about their doctor and finally whether or not they had consulted a doctor about the different symptoms they reported.
