ArticleThe British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners2020
Medically unexplained symptoms: time to and triggers for diagnosis in primary care consultations.
Article in The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- BMC family practice integrated GP care for patients with persistent physical symptoms: feasibility cluster randomised trial.BMC family practice · 2020Trial
- Patients' experience with medical communication about medically unexplained symptoms.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Observational
- Article
- Medically Unexplained Symptoms among Adults from Russia: An Assessment using the Patient Health Questionnaire-15.Psychology in Russia : state of the art · 2023Article
- Article
- It's about time: redesigning consultation length in general practice.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2022Article
- Article
- Potential of a cognitive-behavioural approach to improve patient symptoms in a primary care setting.Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien · 2022Article
- How to learn skilled communication in primary care MUS consultations: a focus group study.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2021Article
- ICD-10-Coding of Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms and Somatoform Disorders-A Survey With German GPs.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Article
- Language matters: indeed it does.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2020Article
- Which difficulties do GPs experience in consultations with patients with unexplained symptoms: a qualitative study.BMC family practice · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIt is currently not known when in the consultation GPs label symptoms as medically unexplained and what triggers this.
aimTo establish the moment in primary care consultations when a GP labels symptoms as medically unexplained and to explore what triggers them to do so. DESIGN AND
settingThis was a qualitative study. Data were collected in the Netherlands in 2015.
methodGPs' consultations were video-recorded. GPs stated whether the consultation was about medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). The GP was asked to reflect on the video-recorded consultation and to indicate the moment when they labelled symptoms as MUS. Qualitative interviewing and analysis were performed to explore the triggers GPs perceived that caused them to label the symptoms as MUS.
resultsA total of 43 of the 393 video-recorded consultations (11%) were labelled as MUS. The mean time until GPs labelled symptoms as medically unexplained was about 4 minutes for newly presented symptoms and 2 minutes for symptoms for which the patients had already visited the GP before. GPs were triggered to label symptoms as MUS in the consultation by: the way patients presented their symptoms; the symptoms not fitting into a specific pattern; patients attributing the symptoms to a psychosocial context; and a discrepancy between symptom presentation and objective findings.
conclusionMost GPs labelled the presented symptoms as medically unexplained soon after the start of the consultation. GPs are triggered to label symptoms as medically unexplained by patients' symptom presentation, symptom patterns, and symptom attribution. This suggests that non-analytical reasoning was a central component in their thought process.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.