Factors related to self-rated health: a survey among patients and their general practitioners.

Objective: To explore associations between general practice patients' SRH and symptoms, diagnoses, chronic conditions, unexplained conditions, and life stressors.

Design: A cross-sectional study. Data were collected from GP and patient questionnaires.

Patients in general practice share a common pattern of symptoms that is partly independent of the diagnosis.

Objective: To describe self-reported symptoms among patients in general practice and to explore the relationships between symptoms experienced by patients and diagnoses given by general practitioners.

Design: Doctor-patient questionnaires focusing on patients' self-reported symptoms during the past 7 days and the doctors' diagnoses.

Setting: General practices in urban and suburban areas in Southeast Norway.

Case-specific colleague guidance for general practitioners' management of sickness absence.

Background: General practitioners (GPs) report sickness absence certification as challenging. They express need for support with functional assessment beyond guidelines and reforms. Case-specific collegial one-to-one guidance for other clinical topics has proved popular with GPs and may be an acceptable and effective way to improve GPs skills and competence in sickness absence certification.

A prospective population-based study of health complaints in adolescence and use of social welfare benefits in young adulthood.

Background: There is a lack of knowledge on how health problems in adolescence are connected to work marginalization in adulthood. The aim of this study was to study work marginalization in young adulthood, measured by use of long-term social welfare benefits, and its associations with self-reported health complaints, total symptom burden and self-rated general health at ages 15-16.

Methods: We linked data from a youth health survey conducted during 1999-2004 to data from Norwegian registries that followed each participant through February 2010.

Medically unexplained conditions considered by patients in general practice.

Background: Patients frequently present with multiple and 'unexplained' symptoms, often resulting in complex consultations. To better understand these patients is a challenge to health care professionals, in general, and GPs, in particular.

Objectives: In our research on symptom reporting, we wanted to explore whether patients consider that they may suffer from conditions commonly regarded as unexplained, and we explored associations between these concerns and symptom load, life stressors and socio-demographic factors.

Hand, hip and knee osteoarthritis in a Norwegian population-based study--the MUST protocol.

Background: Knowledge about the prevalence and consequences of osteoarthritis (OA) in the Norwegian population is limited. This study has been designed to gain a greater understanding of musculoskeletal pain in the general population with a focus on clinically and radiologically confirmed OA, as well as risk factors, consequences, and management of OA.

Methods/design: The Musculoskeletal pain in Ullensaker STudy (MUST) has been designed as an observational study comprising a population-based postal survey and a comprehensive clinical examination of a sub-sample with self-reported OA (MUST OA cohort).

Multiple symptoms and medically unexplained symptoms--closely related concepts in general practitioners' evaluations. A linked doctor-patient study.

Objectives: Symptoms for which doctors cannot find a clear medical explanation, medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), represent a challenge in medical practice. Recent proposals to define this phenomenon are based on patients' symptom count, without distinguishing between medically explained and unexplained symptoms. We describe how general practitioners (GPs) evaluate multiple and medically unexplained symptoms, and how these dimensions are interconnected.

Symptom reporting in a general population in Norway: results from the Ullensaker study.

Objective: To determine the number of symptoms experienced in an adult population and their relationship with self- reported health, demographic, and lifestyle factors.

Design: A postal questionnaire addressing 23 different symptoms, health, demographic, and lifestyle factors.

Setting: The community of Ullensaker, Norway, in 2004.

Symptom load and functional status: results from the Ullensaker population study.

Background: There is evidence to support that the number of self-reported symptoms is a strong predictor of health outcomes. In studies examining the link between symptoms and functional status, focus has traditionally been on individual symptoms or specific groups of symptoms. We aim to identify associations between the number of self-reported symptoms and functional status.

Excluded from social security: rejections of disability pension applications in Norway 1998-2004.

Aims: Admission to disability pension (DP) in Norway, like most other countries, requires a medical condition as the main cause of income reduction. Still, a widespread assumption is that much of the recruitment to the programme is rather due to non-medical, mainly labour market factors. In this article, we study the grey zones between acceptance and rejection of DP applications, in light of the concept of marginalisation.

A strong association between non-musculoskeletal symptoms and musculoskeletal pain symptoms: results from a population study.

Background: There is a lack of knowledge about the pattern of symptom reporting in the general population as most research focuses on specific diseases or symptoms. The number of musculoskeletal pain sites is a strong predictor for disability pensioning and, hence, is considered to be an important dimension in symptom reporting. The simple method of counting symptoms might also be applicable to non-musculoskeletal symptoms, rendering further dimensions in describing individual and public health.

Disability pension rates among immigrants in Norway.

Immigrants from low-income countries are more likely than ethnic Norwegians to receive disability pensions. In a previous study in Oslo, we showed that occupational position probably accounted for all of this difference. The present article presents a study of the total population, with data on education and age at receipt of pension.

[Musculoskeletal disorders as causes of sick leave and disability benefits].

Background: Musculoskeletal disorders make up a heterogeneous group. Our aim was to describe the variation in social insurance benefits for the most prevalent disorders within this group.

Material And Methods: The study was based on the Norwegian labour and welfare administration's registers on sickness benefits and disability benefits.

[Occurrence of musculoskeletal disorders in Norway].

Background: Musculoskeletal pain is one of the most common reasons for seeking both traditional and alternative medical treatment. The aim of this study was to provide an overview of musculoskeletal disorders in Norway.

Material And Methods: The article is based on a Norwegian report on musculoskeletal disorders from 2004, and a non-systematic search in PubMed for relevant literature from the period 2005-2009.

Neck pain is often a part of widespread pain and is associated with reduced functioning.

Study Design: Cross-sectional, population-based postal survey.

Objective: To investigate the relationship between neck pain, pain in other sites and functioning.

Summary Of Background Data: Neck pain is one of the most commonly reported musculoskeletal pain sites, and people with neck pain often report pain in other pain sites.

Education and disability pension: a stronger association than previously found.

Introduction: Although the Norwegian Welfare Law includes rigorous medical criteria for granting disability pensions, several non-medical factors have been shown to be associated with and possible causal factors of pensioning.

Objectives: We analysed the relationship between disability pension and detailed information on educational attainment in different diagnostic groups.

Methods: All ethnic Norwegians aged 18-66 years and alive on 31 December 2003 (n = 2,522,430) were included.

Sickness absence: could gender divide be explained by occupation, income, mental distress and health?

Background: Women have more spells of sickness absence than men but the reasons for this are unknown. We wanted to see if occupation, working conditions, income, health and mental distress may explain this gender difference.

Methods: In a health survey in 2000-01 of all Oslo inhabitants aged 40, 45, and 59/60 years, 11,072 (48.