[Night calls for general practitioners]. / Henvendelser til lege om natten.

We examined night calls in each of four rural Norwegian municipalities with 6,000-7,000 inhabitants during three months in winter 1992/1993. Most out-of-hours calls were covered by general practitioners on rota. The overall rate of night calls (2300-0700) was 55 per 1,000 inhabitants per year, varying from 39 to 77 in the municipalities (p < 0.01). In 42% of the night calls the patient was advised over the telephone, 23% were seen in the surgery and 34% were visited at home. We found a higher rate of night calls in our material than found in previous studies on the subject. We assume that this difference in the number of night calls can be explained to some extent by the different attitudes signalled by the doctors to their patient populations.

[Ambulance helicopters in the mountains. An evaluation of the 1-year activity at the Dombås base]. / Legehelikopter i fjellbygder. Evaluering av ett års drift av Dombåsbasen.

On 1 January 1988 the Norwegian Air Ambulance Plan was put into effect. The operational base for the regional counties Oppland, parts of South Trøndelag, Møre and Romsdal and Hedmark was established in the township of Dombås. The base had a helicopter staffed with a specialist in emergency medicine. The operation of this base was evaluated for the period 1 February 1988 to 1 February 1989. 242 missions were undertaken. In 27 of 184 primary missions (15%) and in 11 of 32 secondary missions (33%) the service was judged to have given health benefit. It may have prevented the death of 13 patients. The service costs during the year were approximately NOK 10 million. The cost-benefit ratio is judged to be too high. In inland-Norway, with a widely scattered population, it is probably better to improve the quality of the emergency services offered by general practitioners and ordinary road ambulances than to use a helicopter staffed with a specialist in emergency medicine.