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[General practioners and patients' general life problems]
John Nessa1, Edvin Schei, Per Stensland
1john.nessa@isf.uib.no
Background:
Many contact general practitioners (GPs) about non-medical problems in their lives; a situation which may be frustrating for GPs.
Material And Methods:
Semi-structured in-depth interviews with six Norwegian GPs by e-mail. The interviews were analysed according to a discourse analysis of which role the GPs considered they had, whether they saw themselves as therapists and how they perceived the personal strain related to working in general medicine.
Results:
The majority of GPs did not distinguish clearly between somatic and more general life-related problems. Nevertheless, they defined medical problems as quite strictly somatic and saw themselves mainly as experts in somatic medicine. They described themselves more as spiritual advisers (pastor-like) than as psychotherapists. Some meant that their work had given them more self- confidence and made them more tolerant, but many said they felt helpless in their role as doctors.
Interpretation:
GPs are doctors for all people. They have to relate to healthy and sick individuals with various medical and general life problems, and often experience a discrepancy between their medical competence and the challenges they meet.
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