Impressions and experience of non-neurologists in neurology

Objectives: Neurological disorders are common inSaudi Arabia and the demand for trained neurologists isstrong. We aimed to study the impressions andexperiences of general physicians in the neurology fieldand examine their referral practices.Methods: We included attendees of the “neurology fornon-neurologists” symposium, which took place from14-15 October 2004 at King Faisal Specialist Hospitaland Research Center in Jeddah, Kingdom of SaudiArabia. We designed a structured 24-item questionnaireto examine their demographics, training, practice, andreferral patterns.Results: One hundred and eight participants registeredfor the symposium, with 69 (64%) questionnairesreturned. Attendee’s ages were 23-60 years (mean 35),with 53% being males. There were 46% consultants andspecialists, 33.5% trainees, 14.5% students, and 6% otherhealth professionals. Most physicians (62%) practiced inthe field of general practice or internal medicine and 62%received a structured neurology rotation during training.Patients with neurological complaints constituted 29.5%of those seen in their practice, and they referred 33.3% toneurology. Only 13.5% and 15.5% were highly confidentin diagnosing and treating these patients. Those whoreported seeing many patients with neurologicalcomplaints (4 on the Likert scale) were 18.8 times morelikely to feel highly confident in their diagnoses (95%confidence interval [CI]: 3-195, p=0.0002) and 23 timesmore likely to feel highly confident in their management(95% CI: 3.6-236, p=0.0005). Many physicians (20.5%)had no direct access to a neurologist for referrals.Conclusions: Many general physicians were not highlyconfident in diagnosing and treating neurology patients.Given the limited number of neurologists, we recommendappropriate neurological training of generalists