Incongruous referrals

Abstract

A survey of 1344 patients registered at a new health centre in Glasgow assessed the prevalence of symptoms and referrals together with subjective, gradings of medical symptoms in terms of pain, disability, and perceived seriousness, and of social symptoms in terms of worry or inconvenience. These grading scales were used to define referral behaviour which appeared to be incongruous in the light of the respondents' own perceptions of their symptoms. In this way incongruous referrals indicated the size of the medical and social symptom "iceberg" and "trivia". For both medical and social symptoms the "icebergs" were larger than the "trivia"; the medical-symptom "iceberg" was two to three times greater than the medical-symptom "trivia".