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Why do patients seek family physicians' services for cold symptoms?
D H Keast1, J N Marshall, M A Stewart
1College of Family Physicians of Canada.
Objective:
To examine the frequency of presentation to family physicians' offices for cold symptoms, the reasons for presentation, and the duration of symptoms before presentation.
Design:
Prospective cross-sectional survey.
Participants:
One hundred consecutive patient encounters in each of 15 family practices from January 27 to February 3, 1994, involving both academic and non-academic family physicians in the London region. Data were collected prospectively using a checklist attached to each chart.
Main Outcome Measures:
Proportion of patients presenting with cold symptoms, reasons for presentation, number of days patients had had symptoms, billing code.
Results:
A total of 1421 checklists were analyzed, 822 from academic practices and 599 from community practices. Proportion of presentations for cold symptoms was 14.8%, but visits coded as common cold represented 5.7%. Median number of days patients waited before presentation was 7.0; older patients tended to wait longer. Many patients were worried about developing complications (51.0%) or were fed up with their symptoms (31.9%). Most patients were between the ages of 20 and 64 (44.6%), and 57.6% of all patients had developed complications requiring treatment.
Conclusions:
The proportion of visits coded as common cold was lower than Ontario averages. Most patients had complications rather than simple colds and had managed their symptoms on their own for a fairly long time.
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