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.