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.

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.

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.

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.