A few practitioners detailed other procedures, and 166 skipped this question.
Again, some practitioners detailed other procedures which did not fit into the categories above or provided insufficient information.
Practitioners will be excluded if they are not current primary care providers, e.g. specialists or retired practitioners, are not practising within the study area, or the practitioner details are not sufficient to contact them regarding the study.
After the admission interview with the general practitioner (details have been described previously [ 14]), 11 consultations of 20 min over 2.5 years were scheduled alternately with the nurse practitioner and the general practitioner.
Firstly, written informed consent was obtained, followed by demographic information including their fasting status, ethnicity, general practitioner details (where the subject had consented for this information to be included) and a medical history questionnaire relating to cardiovascular health and diabetes.
Practitioners recorded details of their 10 most recent patients, including demographic details, primary reason for consulting and lifestyle advice provided.
Of the 1,328 forms that were correctly filled in and returned, 222 practitioners gave details of at least one patient they had tried to treat.
All site physicians and nurse practitioners received details about the study and provided informed consent.
Between April 1999 and March 2000, a random sample of 1,047 Australian general practitioners recorded details of 104,700 patient encounters.
Study design: A network of >1200 representatively distributed practitioners reported detailed data on all clinically diagnosed cases and provided specimens for laboratory diagnosis.
