ArticleScandinavian journal of primary health care2022
Discovering strengths in patients with medically unexplained symptoms - a focus group study with general practitioners.
Article in Scandinavian journal of primary health care, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Living with and caring for somatic symptom disorders: a qualitative interview-study with patients and GPs using a deductive-inductive content analytic approach.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Addressing hidden tensions and grey areas of general practice: a qualitative study of the experiences of newly qualified GPs attending a course on generalist medicine.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2024Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundWhen patients suffer medically unexplained symptoms, consultations can be difficult and frustrating for both patient and GP. Acknowledging the patient as a co-subject can be particularly important when the symptoms remain unexplained. One way of seeing the patient as a co-subject is by recognizing any among their strong sides.
objectivesTo explore GPs' experiences with discovering strengths in their patients with medically unexplained symptoms and elicit GPs' reflections on how this might be useful.
methodsFour focus-groups with 17 GPs in Norway. Verbatim transcripts from the interviews were analyzed by systematic text condensation.
resultsRecollecting patients' strengths was quiet challenging to the GPs. Gradually they nevertheless shared a range of examples, and many participants had experienced that knowing patients' strong sides could make consultations less demanding, and sometimes enable the GP to provide better help. Identifying strengths in patients with unexplained symptoms required a deliberate effort on the GPs' behalf, and this seemed to be a result of a strong focus on biomedical disease and loss of function.
conclusionsAcknowledging patients' strong sides can bolster GPs' ability to help patients with medically unexplained symptoms. However, the epistemic disadvantage of generalist expertise makes this hard to achieve. It is difficult for GPs to integrate person-centered perspectives with biomedical knowledge due to the privileged position of the latter. This seems to indicate a need for system-level innovations to increase the status of person-centered clinical work. Key pointsMUS is challenging for both patients and GPs mainly because of the incongruence between symptoms and the dominating biomedical model.GPs' focus on pathology and loss of function can prevent them from discovering patients' strengths.Awareness of patients' strengths can make consultations less demanding for GPs and enable them to provide better help.A conscious effort is needed to discover patients' strengths.
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