Symptoms encountered during a three-year family practice residency

Family practice research so far has placed a heavy emphasis upon diagnoses (or problems). There are no published descriptive studies of symptoms collected in a family practice in the United States. This study is a collection of the symptoms encountered by a family medicine resident during his three years in a model unit. Three hundred four patients were seen, offering 1,377 complaints in 956 visits (1.44 symptom per visit). Morbidity related complaints consisted of 59 percent of the total, 9 percent of the total being low back or extremity complaints, while 41 percent were nonsymptomatic reasons for a visit. The majority of morbidity complaints dealt with pain. Three percent of the total consisted of delayed complaints, presented only after the resident previously had dealt with other minor complaints in that visit. The results corresponded closely to those found in the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey.