An exploration of GPs' use of MRI: a critical incident study

Direct access to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is becoming available to GPs in the UK, offering major benefits for the improved diagnosis and management of certain clinical conditions. Variations in usage of this service may be large, and effective locally produced guidelines are not currently available. The Department of General Practice is conducting a research programme to develop and evaluate methods to optimize MRI use by GPs.

We aimed to describe the current use of MRI by GPs in South Glamorgan; to summarize their reasons for requesting MRI; and to produce criteria to assess the appropriateness of magnetic resonance (MR) scan requests.

Using the critical incident technique, 25 GPs were interviewed about recent scans requested for patients with knee and lumbar spine complaints. A local panel of primary and secondary care doctors was convened to develop criteria for assessing MR scan requests.

Sixty-two scan requests were discussed. Doctors' reasons for requesting MR scans were identified and classified. Reasons for requests included personal, contextual and biomedical variables. Fifteen patients (24%) were managed in primary care following MRI when otherwise they would have been referred. When referrals were made, GPs felt able to reinforce the request and occasionally to direct the patient somewhere more appropriate. The panel reviewed the interview data to produce objective criteria to assess scan requests. The criteria reflect the relative importance of non-biomedical variables in the decision to request MRI.

The study identified those reasons which are important to GPs when requesting MR scans and the impact of this new technology upon patient management. Interview data have been used to inform locally developed consensus criteria, which will be made available as practice guidelines as the research programme progresses.