From manila to monitor: biographies of general practitioner workspaces

This article presents a study that explores how general practitioners (GPs) reflect on their workspaces and what that tells us about how professional practice is enacted. The study employed biography as its data collection method to enable three pilot and nine other GPs from the Swansea Region in the UK to write about their consulting rooms. Thematic analysis of biographies, employing individual and group analysis sessions, revealed eleven themes of GP workspace. These indicated that although a minority of the group were totally satisfied with their environments, most of the group spent time and energy finding ways of creating environments of 'best fit', thus enabling lack of function to become part of their daily routine.