Worry: a particular determinant of consultation illuminated

In this study, exploring the worry experienced by patients in the GP waiting room and the reasons for being worried, 791 patients completed a structured questionnaire just before they consulted their GP, and afterwards. The perceptions of the patients concerning the complaint and the need for more information about the complaint played an important role in the degree of worry. Patients who wanted more information about the complaint were more worried than the patients who did not feel they needed more information. Not surprisingly, the more serious the patients perceived the complaint to be and the greater the perceived chance of serious disease, the more worried they were. General health status and frequency of consultations per year were related to the degree of general worry. According to the patient self-reports, worry was almost never due to information from the mass media or from other persons, or to a concern for the consultation itself. Patients generally evaluated the consultation as positive with respect to the way their worry was discussed. The decrease in worry after consulting the GP, in patients who were positive about the consultation was significantly higher than that in patients who were less positive. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.