A retrospective review of the community medicine needs from osteoporosis services in Canada

BACKGROUND: Comprehensive, real-world osteoporosis care has many facets not explicitly addressed in practice guidelines. We sought to determine the areas of knowledge and practice needs in osteoporosis medicine for the purpose of developing an osteoporosis curriculum for specialist trainees and knowledge translation tools for primary care. METHODS: This was a retrospective review of referral questions received from primary care and specialists to an academic, multi-disciplinary tertiary osteoporosis and metabolic bone clinic. There were 400 referrals in each of 5 years (2015–2019) selected randomly for review. The primary referral question was elucidated and assigned to one of 16 pre-determined referral topics reflecting questions in the care of osteoporosis and metabolic bone patients. The top 7 referral topics by frequency were determined while recording the referral source. RESULTS: The majority of referrals (71%) came from urban primary care. The most common specialists to request care included rheumatology, oncology, gastroenterology and orthopedic surgery (fracture liaison services). Primary care referrals predominantly requested assistance with routine osteoporosis assessments, bisphosphonate holidays, bisphosphonate adverse effects/alternatives, fractures occurring despite therapy and adverse changes on bone densitometry despite treatment. Specialists most often referred patients with complex secondary bone diseases or cancer. The main study limitation was that knowledge needs of referring physicians were inferred from the referral question rather than tested directly. CONCLUSION: By assessing actual community demand for services, this study identified several such topics that may be useful targets to develop high quality knowledge translation tools and curriculum design in programs training specialists in osteoporosis care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12902-022-01000-y.