[Night calls for general practitioners]

We examined night calls in each of four rural Norwegian municipalities with 6,000-7,000 inhabitants during three months in winter 1992/1993. Most out-of-hours calls were covered by general practitioners on rota. The overall rate of night calls (2300-0700) was 55 per 1,000 inhabitants per year, varying from 39 to 77 in the municipalities (p < 0.01). In 42% of the night calls the patient was advised over the telephone, 23% were seen in the surgery and 34% were visited at home. We found a higher rate of night calls in our material than found in previous studies on the subject. We assume that this difference in the number of night calls can be explained to some extent by the different attitudes signalled by the doctors to their patient populations.