GP and Practice Nurse contact rates, by gender and age group

The charts below show the annual contact rates for GPs and practice nurses in the year ending March 2007, by age group, for male and female patients separately. With the exception of the very youngest and oldest age groups (0-4 and 75 plus, respectively), contact rates are higher for females than for males. Whereas in the younger age categories most patient contacts (particularly for males) are with GPs (up to 5 times more than with practice nurses), in the older age categories the practice nurse share increases substantially to nearly match the GP contacts. This may reflect the large contribution practice nurses make to chronic disease management, which is particularly relevant to older patients.  These charts are also available in Excel format  (27KB).

The 'All Ages' figures show that the average (mean) number of GP contacts per registered patient in 2006/07 was 2.8. The average number of contacts with a practice nurse per registered patient was lower than for GPs, at 1.3 contacts in 2006/07. These averages are based on all registered patients - the calculations include patients that did not attend their practice at all during the year. For those patients who had at least one contact with a GP in 2006/07, the mean number of GP contacts per patient was 3.7 (median = 3). The mean is considerably larger than the median because of a fairly small number of patients with a large number of contacts (just under 5% of patients had more than 10 contacts in the year). Similarly, for patients seeing a practice nurse at least once during the year 2006/07, the mean number of practice nurse contacts per patient was also rather larger than the median (3.0 vs. 2). Three percent of this patient group had more than 10 contacts during the year (figures not shown in separate table or graph). 

Please note that in contrast to the figures shown on the 'Contacts by staff discipline ' page, figures shown in the figure below have not been adjusted for the slight under-recording found in the PTI Quality Assurance cycles and are therefore slightly lower than these on the aforementioned page.

GP and practice nurse annual contact rates for 2006/07 ^{1, 2}
by discipline and age group for (A) males and (B) females

¹ Based on 45 PTI practices that submitted complete data for the year ending 31 March 2007. Figures are standardised by deprivation but are not adjusted for the slight under-recording found in previous formal PTI Quality Assurance cycles.
² Population source: Community Health Index (CHI) record, as at 30 September 2006.

Note: Following a substantial review of PTI data and subsequent revisions to the methodology for all PTI analyses, direct comparisons with figures produced prior to 27th March 2007 are not valid.  See the Note of Revisions for further information.

Source: Practice Team Information (PTI), ISD Scotland (last updated 25 March 2008)

Related information:
Contact rates by age and gender for all disciplines; 2003/04 to 2006/07 (Excel table)  (70KB)