Impingement (or pinching) of soft-tissues in or around the shoulder is a common cause of pain and is often linked to tissue damage in and around the joint. If doctors and therapists could identify impingement and associated damage using simple, physical tests, it would help them to inform on the best treatment approach at an early stage. We were particularly interested in the primary (community) care setting, because this is where most shoulder pain is diagnosed and managed. We reviewed original research papers for evidence on the accuracy of physical tests for shoulder impingement or associated damage, in people whose symptoms and/or history suggest any of these disorders. To find the research papers, we searched the main electronic databases of medical and allied literature up to 2010. Two review authors screened assessed the quality of each research paper and extracted important information. If multiple research papers reported using the same test for the same condition, we intended to combine their results to gain a more precise estimate of the test's accuracy. We included 33 research papers. These related to studies of 4002 shoulders in 3852 patients. None of the studies exclusively looked at patients from primary care, though two recruited some of their patients from primary care. The majority of studies used arthroscopic surgery as the reference standard. There were 170 different target condition/index test combinations but only six instances where the same test was used in the same way, and for the same reason, in two studies. For this reason combining results was not appropriate. We concluded that there is insufficient evidence upon which to base selection of physical tests for shoulder impingement, and potentially related conditions, in primary care.