General practitioners' office consultations with elderly patients – diagnoses and prescriptions: A report from the Møre & Romsdal Prescription Study

Authors

  • Jørund Straand
  • Hogne Sandvik
  • Kirsten Rokstad

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5324/nje.v8i2.450

Abstract

 

Study objectives:

 

 

Design:

 

 

Setting:

 

 

Participants:

 

 

Main results:

 

 

Conclusion:

 

 

Key words:

 

 

This paper is based on a previous Norwegian publication: Straand J, Sandvik H, Rokstad K. 10 850 kontorkonsultasjoner

med eldre pasienter i allmennpraksis. Fra diagnose-resept-undersøkelsen i Møre og Romsdal.

 

Tidsskr Nor Lægeforen

1997;

 

117: 3980-3984. With permission.

health services for the aged; family practice; drugsIn the context of quality assurance large benefits may be gained even if focus is put on rather

few diagnoses and drugs.

60% of the consultations involved female patients, mean age was 74 years. One of three

consultations were for new diagnoses, two thirds were follow-ups. The most common diagnostic groups were

cardiovascular (28%), musculoskeletal (13%), psychiatric (8%) and respiratory diseases (8%). Almost 10% of

all consultations were for hypertension. Drugs were prescribed during 56% of all consultations. 27% of all

prescriptions were for cardiovascular drugs, and 25% were for the central nervous system. The 20 most common

diagnoses constituted more than half of all the diagnoses, and the ten most common drugs (therapeutic

groups) constituted almost 70% of all prescriptions.

In 1988 and 1989 the general practitioners recorded all encounters with patients over a period

of two months. The participation rate was close to 100%, and we report data from 10,850 office consultations

with elderly patients (65 years and older).

The Norwegian county of Møre and Romsdal.Cross-sectional survey.To analyse office consultations with elderly people in general practice: reason for encounter,

diagnostic indications for prescribing drugs, and what drugs are prescribed for the different diagnoses.

ABSTRACT

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2009-10-30

How to Cite

Straand, J., Sandvik, H., & Rokstad, K. (2009). General practitioners’ office consultations with elderly patients – diagnoses and prescriptions: A report from the Møre & Romsdal Prescription Study. Norsk Epidemiologi, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.5324/nje.v8i2.450

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (1998): The epidemiology of ageing

Section

Articles

License

Norsk Epidemiologi licenses all content of the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. This means, among other things, that anyone is free to copy and distribute the content, as long as they give proper credit to the author(s) and the journal. For further information, see Creative Commons website for human readable or lawyer readable versions.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).