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The gist in two minutes
The numbers, the evidence and the pattern in a short video. Handy to share with someone who has heard "just take a paracetamol" a little too often.
Prefer to read? Everything from the video is written out below, with sources.
The figures
Paracetamol is the most commonly used drug in the Netherlands. The magnitude is larger than most people think.
And use is increasing. We are taking more and more medicines per person: from 515 to 557 standard daily doses per head per year in ten years (RIVM). That is not just because there are more people.
Does it actually work?
For many symptoms, paracetamol is an excellent and safe first choice. But the evidence is limited for a number of common symptoms. For lower back pain, paracetamol works on average no better than a fake pill, and for osteoarthritis of the knee and hip the effect is minimal at best. This is evident from a meta-analysis of thirteen randomized studies in The BMJ (2015), reproduced by the Dutch Journal of Medicine.
And yet it is often the first step. Not out of unwillingness, but because it is safe and cheap. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem only starts when nothing follows after that first step.
The pressure on the GP
This file is emphatically not about lazy doctors. It's about a system under pressure. In 2024, 78 percent of general practices reported a high workload and 60 percent had to temporarily close their doors to new patients (Nivel, 2024). The standard ten-minute consultation dates from a different time; International research shows that an average consultation actually requires more tasks and more time.
At the same time, 40 percent of people who complain about GP care do not feel taken seriously. Please note: that figure only concerns people who already had a complaint, not all patients. But it exactly touches on the feeling that many people recognise: you call with a complaint, and you hang up with "take a paracetamol, call back next week".
The figure that is missing
How often do people stop calling back after that and just wait for it to go away? Nobody knows that. It is not recorded anywhere. We count billions of pills, but not who is turned away at the front door.
That is not sloppiness of an individual practice. It is a blind spot of the entire system. And it is precisely in that blind spot that care traps arise: symptoms that return years later as something that could have been investigated long ago.
Do you recognise this pattern?
Was your complaint treated with a painkiller and a "just look at it", without a follow-up appointment or plan? Share your experience. Not to appoint a doctor, but to make the pattern visible.
Justification and sources
Estimates are explicitly referred to in this file as estimates, with the reason why a hard figure is missing. We think an honest "nobody knows that" is stronger than a made-up percentage.
- RIVM / IQVIA (2022): more than 1.1 million kilos of paracetamol sold and distributed per year; approximately 73% through over-the-counter sales.
- Nivel (2023): 95% of Dutch people use paracetamol at least once a year.
- Machado et al., The BMJ (2015), acquired by NTVG: meta-analysis of 13 RCTs on paracetamol for low back pain and osteoarthritis.
- Nivel (2024): 78% of practices report high workload; 60% had a temporary patient stop.
- RIVM letter report 2023-0117: increase in medication use from 515 to 557 DDD per head per year.