MUSCULOSKELETAL
A r t h r i t i s R e s e a rc h U K N a t i o n a
Bulletin 1:
l Prim
MATTERS
a r y Ca
i
re Centre, Keele Univers
ty
WHAT DO GENERAL PRACTITIONERS SEE?
The Typical General Practice
We have created The Typical General Practice from the combined details of 12
practices which contribute to our Keele GP Research Partnership to give a picture
of average workload.
• The Typical General Practice has 10,000 registered patients. 1,600 (16%) are
aged 0–14, 4,600 (46%) are aged 15–49 and 3,800 (38%) are aged 50 and over.
• In the course of one year, the GPs saw 2,100 patients with musculoskeletal
problems (21% of the registered population).
– only respiratory illness was recorded for more patients (2,800).
These bulletins are
designed to provide
information for general
practitioners, the primary
care team, teachers,
trainers and policy makers
about musculoskeletal
problems in practice
The idea of this first
bulletin is to provide a
picture of the relative
frequency of consultations
for musculoskeletal
problems in general
practice
Figure 1 – Number of patients consulting by problem in a practice of 10,000
• There were a total of 4,400 musculoskeletal consultations during the year.
– this compares with 6,100 consultations for respiratory illness.
• Musculoskeletal problems made up 12% of all consultations labelled with a
diagnosis.
October 2009