Do not intervene with tennis elbow, no antibiotic ointment for a red eye. Dutch general practitioners have drawn up a list of thirty actions that, according to the latest scientific knowledge, they should not do.
General practitioner Toosje Valkenburg (not in the photo): ‘We like to do more than to let it go, but sometimes doing nothing is also a treatment.’ (image Jiri Buller)
Nijmegen
Researchers from Radboudumc, in collaboration with the Dutch College of General Practitioners (NHG), have thoroughly examined 92 general practitioner guidelines. In this they found a total of 385 recommendations when a general practitioner should not do something. This concerns forms of care that do not make the patient better, but where side effects can occur.
Several hundred general practitioners have helped to rank these recommendations according to the number of times a doctor is confronted with them in practice and according to the possible consequences for the patient. A top 30 was rolled out of this, which was published on Friday in the scientific journal BMC Primary Care.
This should contribute to making the recommendations for non-intervention even better under the a..