A study of workload before and after retirement at the age of 65 years.

The consultation rate in general practice is closely related to age. Lees and Cooper (1963), taking stock of 37 studies of general practices, commented that overall the patterns for consultation rates took the form of a step ladder for females, and a step ladder, broken by a dip in the 15-45 years age group, for males. Both distributions reached a maximum in the 65 plus group. The Research Committee of the Council of the College of General Practitioners (1962) showed a 50% increase in the rate of consultation for those persons aged 65 years and over compared with those aged 45-64 years. A recent study of consultation rates in a mining area general practice (Rider, Waters, Charnock, and Lunn, 1969) has shown a more complicated pattern. Whereas the consultation rates for women followed the conventional pattern of increasing with age, the rates for men showed a large increase in the 45-64 years age group and a drop in the 65 plus group. It was thought that the need to certify unfitness for work was largely responsible for this pattern, and that the need probably had two components: (1) a higher morbidity rate among miners; and (2) the nature of mining work; an illness or injury which prevented a miner from working would not incapacitate him in many other occupations. Clearly the consultation pattern in this practice merited further study to determine the effect of men's work on the demand for general practitioner services. This paper examines the consultation patterns of men who retired normally at the age of 65 years for the one-year period immediately preceding retirement and the one year immediately following retirement. The consultation patterns of their wives over the same two years are also examined. METHOD The records of all men born in 1900, 1901, and 1902 were extracted from the practice files. The records of men working past the age of 65 and of men retiring early were put aside. The remainder, retiring at 65 years in 1965, 1966, and 1967 respectively, were examined and data were collected of all surgery consultations for one year before retirement and one year after retirement. The records of the wives of these men were also extracted and similar data were recorded for one year before and one year after the husbands' retirement.