Table 3.

Proportions of GPs who considered that the national guidelines promoted development of their competence and improved their quality in managing sickness certification cases, respectively

	To what extent have the national guidelines helped you to develop your competence in managing sickness certification cases?*						What effects have the diagnosis-specific sickness certification guidelines had on ensuring the quality of your management of sickness certification cases?†
	To a large extent	To a fairly large extent	To some extent	Not at all	PR for a large or fairly large extent		Very beneficial	Moderately beneficial	Not beneficial	PR for very beneficial
	n=185	n=790	n=1587	n=531			n=1039	n=1799	n=267
	%	%	%	%	PR	95% CI	%	%	%	PR	95% CI
All GPs	6.0	25.5	51.3	17.2	–	–	33.5	57.9	8.6	–	–
Educational level
Specialist	5.0	23.5	52.8	18.7	1	–	28.6	61.3	10.1	1	–
In resident training	6.1	28.0	50.9	15.0	1.20	1.02 to 1.40	38.3	56.1	5.6	1.34	1.16 to 1.55
Registered physician	11.7	31.7	42.8	13.8	1.52	1.18 to 1.97	49.3	43.1	7.6	1.72	1.35 to 2.21
Medical degree	12.0	34.9	42.7	10.4	1.64	1.32 to 2.05	58.3	39.2	2.5	2.04	1.67 to 2.49
Frequency of GPs' consultations involving sickness certification
>5 Times a week	3.7	22.9	54.8	18.6	1	–	28.7	60.2	11.1	1	–
1–5 Times a week	7.2	27.1	49.3	16.4	1.29	1.13 to 1.48	35.8	57.4	6.8	1.25	1.09 to 1.42
<1 Time a week	12.8	31.9	41.8	13.5	1.68	1.29 to 2.20	50.7	43.8	5.6	1.76	1.37 to 2.27

Data are presented as prevalence ratio (PR) with 95% CI.

^*No response from 89 GPs (2.8%).

^†No response from 77 GPs (2.4%).

GPs, general practitioners.