[General practitioners' storytelling is useful in quality development of general practice]

A consultant function to advice general practitioners (GPs) with regard to interactions with ethnic minority patients was developed in the Copenhagen municipality in 2002-2003 as a quality developing project. One part of the project focused on the challenges experienced by the GPs. Neither guidance nor teaching was required; instead the GPs were inclined to tell stories about their patients. This article describes and discusses how a narrative approach can be used in the circle of quality development. It is argued that a narrative analysis illuminates positions and structures and gives useful insight to act. In this project it illuminated structural challenges, which had to be solved at a level different from the individual level, which was the focus of the consultant project.