Decisional conflict in general practice: strategies of patient management

Exploratory interviews were carried out with 37 general practitioners as an initial stage of a larger project investigating medical decision making in primary care. Qualitative analysis of free responses to a set of semi-structured questions revealed a common set of variables which influence decisions about patient management. These included: time pressure, uncertainty and patient characteristics. Results corroborate previously reported findings and may have important implications for the variation of management decisions about similar patient complaints. Strategies of patient management are identified, and the correspondence between these and the postulates of decisional conflict theory explored.