Frequent attenders in a Finnish health centre : morbidity and reasons for encounter
Sammanfattning
The objective was to describe the proportion of frequent attenders among primary health care patients and their sociodemographic characteristics, morbidity and reasons for encounter with the help of a cross-sectional case-control study. A municipal health centre in Oulainen, a small rural town in northern Finland served as the setting. Frequent attenders express more somatic and less psychiatric reasons for encounter that can be assumed according to their morbidity. The role of somatization is discussed.