Adjudications and tinkering with care for socially vulnerable patients with type 2 diabetes in general practice.

OBJECTIVE: To analyse the mechanisms at play in the adjudications made by professionals and socially vulnerable patients with type 2 diabetes about their eligibility for care. DESIGN, SETTING AND SUBJECTS: The study included 14 patients and 10 health professionals in seven general practice surgeries in deprived areas in Greater Copenhagen. The study data consist of 17 semi-structured interviews with patients and 22 with health professionals immediately after observation of 23 consultations. Our analytical approach was inspired by Systematic Text Condensation and the concept of 'candidacy' for access to health care. RESULTS: Adjudications of patients not being candidates for services were common, but we also found that both patients and health professionals worked to align the services to the needs of the patients. This could include using services differently than was intended by the providers or by changing routines to make it easier for patients to use the services. We discuss these processes as 'tinkering'. This usually implies that the best individual solution for the patient is aimed for, and in this study, the best solution sometimes meant not focusing on diabetes. CONCLUSION: The study adds to existing knowledge about access to services for socially vulnerable patients by demonstrating that both patients and professionals in general practice engage in tinkering processes to make services work.

Unequal use and benefits of health services play a significant role in relation to social inequality in healthFlexibility in services and alternatives to school-like rehabilitation are needed to reduce inequality in access to health carePatients were sometimes judged as unsuitable for available routine services, but professionals 'tinkered' with services to make them fitAdaptation of services by professionals in general practice implies a longer time frame for obtaining goals.

Conceptualizing negotiation in the clinical encounter - A scoping review using principles from critical interpretive synthesis.

OBJECTIVE: Negotiation as an analytical concept in research about clinical encounters is vague. We aim to provide a conceptual synthesis of key characteristics of the process of negotiation in clinical encounters based on a scoping review. METHODS: We conducted a scoping review of relevant literature in Embase, Psych Info, Global Health and SCOPUS. We included 25 studies from 1737 citations reviewed. RESULTS: We found that the process of negotiation is socially situated depending on the individual patient and professional, a dynamic element of the interaction that may occur both tacitly and explicitly at all stages of the encounter and is not necessarily tied to a specific health problem. Hence, negotiation is complex and influenced by both social, biomedical, and temporal contexts. CONCLUSIONS: We found that negotiation between patient and health professional occurs at all stages of the clinical encounter. Negotiation is influenced by social, temporal, and biomedical contexts that encompass the social meeting between patient and health professional. We suggest that health professionals strive to be attentive to patients' tacit negotiation practices. This will strengthen the recognition of the patients' actual wishes for their course of treatment which can thus guide the health professionals' recommendations and treatment.

Guidance for Implementing Video Consultations in Danish General Practice: Rapid Cycle Coproduction Study.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed various spheres of health care. General practitioners (GPs) have widely replaced face-to-face consultations with telephone or video consultations (VCs) to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Using VCs for health service delivery is an entirely new way of practicing for many GPs. However, this transition process has largely been conducted with no formal guidelines, which may have caused implementation barriers. This study presents a rapid cycle coproduction approach for developing a guide to assist VC implementation in general practice. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to describe the developmental phases of the VC guide to assist general practices in implementing VCs and summarize the evaluation made by general practice users. METHODS: The development of a guide for VC in general practice was structured as a stepped process based on the coproduction and prototyping processes. We used an iterative framework based on rapid qualitative analyses and interdisciplinary collaborations. Thus, the guide was developed in small, repeated cycles of development, implementation, evaluation, and adaptation, with a continuous exchange between research and practice. The data collection process was structured in 3 main phases. First, we conducted a literature review, recorded observations, and held informal and semistructured interviews. Second, we facilitated coproduction with stakeholders through 4 workshops with GPs, a group interview with patient representatives, and individual revisions by GPs. Third, nationwide testing was conducted in 5 general practice clinics and was followed by an evaluation of the guide through interviews with GPs. RESULTS: A rapid cycle coproduction approach was used to explore the needs of general practice in connection with the implementation of VC and to develop useful, relevant, and easily understandable guiding materials. Our findings suggest that a guide for VCs should include advice and recommendations regarding the organization of VCs, the technical setup, the appropriate target groups, patients' use of VCs, the performance of VCs, and the arrangements for booking a VC. CONCLUSIONS: The combination of coproduction, prototyping, small iterations, and rapid data analysis is a suitable approach when contextually rich, hands-on guide materials are urgently needed. Moreover, this method could provide an efficient way of developing relevant guide materials for general practice to aid the implementation of new technology beyond the pandemic period.

"It Is a Full-time Job to Be Ill": Patient Work Involved in Attending Formal Diabetes Care Among Socially Vulnerable Danish Type 2 Diabetes Patients.

Previous research has shown social inequality in type 2 diabetes prevalence and that socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients benefit less than average from health services. Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between February 2017 and March 2018 in a Danish specialized outpatient clinic, this article focuses on patient work among socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients. Through attending to the border zone between formal health care and self-care, we show that patients do a lot of work requiring skills, resources, and initiative, to access and benefit from formal care. This work is complex and implicit in the organization of care. Patients' social situations, especially their employment situation, complicate getting patient work done. Attending to patient work and implicit tasks in care organization may help us to see how social inequality in type 2 diabetes outcomes develops, and may be combated.

Adjusting health care: practicing care for socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients.

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes cluster in lower social groups and people with type 2 diabetes from lower social groups experience more complications, benefit less from health services and live shorter lives than people with type 2 diabetes from higher social groups. Different logics govern diabetes care and potentially influence the possibility of socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients to access and benefit from health services. In order to understand which practice and underlying logic enable socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients to access and benefit from diabetes care we aim to describe what professionals at a specialized diabetes clinic do to adjust services to patient's needs and make the tasks involved in diabetes care doable for socially vulnerable patients and how this work is embedded in an organizational and moral context. METHODS: Ethnographic fieldwork combining participant observation and interviews was carried out between February 2017 and March 2018 in a specialized diabetes clinic located in a socially deprived area in the capital region of Denmark. Sixteen patients (9 male, 7 female, aged 35-73 years) and 12 professionals (7 doctors, 4 nurses, 1 secretary) participated in the study. We used Annemarie Mol's concept of "the logic of care" to guide our analysis. RESULTS: Our analysis shows that the logic of care and the care practices in this clinic are characterized by a needs-based approach to treatment involving adjustment of services (permeability, timing, and content) and seeing the patient as a person with many needs. Throughout our description of selected care practices, we both characterize how health professionals practice this particular logic of care and the organizational and normative conditions that this logic is entangled with. CONCLUSIONS: Practicing diabetes care based on patients' needs involves individualization, something often described as an element of patient centred care. Our study shows that this ideal of individualization and adjustment of treatment is possible in practice. Organizational flexibility and an organizational culture that values patient needs enable needs-based care. In order for socially vulnerable type 2 diabetes patients to benefit from health services it is necessary to create conditions under which professionals can attend to these patients' multiple and complex needs. Adjusting care to these needs demand a variety of professional efforts some of which are hardly predictable or standardisable.

Agenda navigation in consultations covering multiple topics. A qualitative case study from general practice.

OBJECTIVE: To explore how agenda navigation may be accomplished underway in consultations covering multiple topics, we identified and analyzed one GP's communicative strategies. DESIGN, SETTING, AND SUBJECTS: A qualitative observational case study with linguistic microanalysis of an exemplary consultation between a female patient with diabetes and her male GP. We used speech act theory to identify communicative actions that indicated agenda navigation by the GP in transitions between episodes concerning ten topics. RESULTS: Microanalysis revealed different aspects of agenda navigation by the GP using speech acts, especially ways of opening or closing an episode. The opening of episodes was characterized by speech acts accepting the patient's request to discuss a topic, mostly at the beginning of the consultation. Speech acts to inform or to request information from the patient dominated later in the consultation. The GP closed all episodes using speech acts to instruct or appraise the patient, or to make agreements and plans. CONCLUSION AND PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Skilful agenda navigation is an important tool for consultations covering multiple issues and could be further developed for medical education. The opening and closing of episodes were vital communicative strategies supporting patient-centered communication in a complex consultation while maintaining the focus of the consultation agenda.KEY POINTSWhile traditional consultation models cover one health problem, GP consultations often include many patient issues in each session.Linguistic microanalysis of speech acts helped to identify communication strategies in a GP consultation with multiple topics.The GP conducted agenda navigation by distinctly opening and closing episodes concerning specific topics.Episodes were opened by accepting, informing, and requesting and closed by instruction, appraisal, making agreements, or plans.

Symptom burden in multimorbidity: a population-based combined questionnaire and registry study from Denmark.

OBJECTIVE: Patients with multimorbidity may carry a large symptom burden. Symptoms are often what drive patients to seek healthcare and they also assist doctors with diagnosis. We examined whether symptom burden is additive in people with multimorbidity compared with people with a single morbidity. DESIGN: This is a longitudinal cohort study drawing on questionnaire and Danish national registry data. Multimorbidity was defined as having diagnoses from at least two out of ten morbidity groups. Associations between morbidity groups and symptom burden were estimated with multivariable models. PARTICIPANTS: In 2012, 47 452 participants from the Danish Symptom Cohort answered a questionnaire about symptoms (36 symptoms in total), including whether symptoms were affecting their daily activities (impairment score) and their worries about present symptoms (worry score) (the highest score among the 36 symptoms on a 0-4 scale). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The primary outcome was symptom burden. RESULTS: Participants without morbidity reported 4.77 symptoms (out of 36 possible). Participants with one, two or three morbidities reported more symptoms than patients without morbidity (0.95 (CI 0.86 to 1.03), 1.87 (CI 1.73 to 2.01) and 2.89 (CI 2.66 to 3.12), respectively). Furthermore, they reported a higher impairment score (0.36 (0.32 to 0.39), 0.65 (0.60 to 0.70) and 1.06 (0.98 to 1.14)) and a higher worry score (0.34 (0.31 to 0.37), 0.62 (0.57 to 0.66) and 1.02 (0.94 to 1.10)) than participants without morbidity. In 45 possible combinations of multimorbidity (participants with two morbidities), interaction effects were additive in 37, 41 and 36 combinations for the number of symptoms, impairment score and worry score, respectively. CONCLUSION: Participants without morbidity reported a substantial number of symptoms. Having a single morbidity or multimorbidity resulted in approximately one extra symptom for each extra morbidity. In most combinations of multimorbidity, symptom burden was additive.

Taking no for an answer. Nurses' consultations with people with cardiac disease about rehabilitation: A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: Research shows that many people with cardiac disease decline cardiac rehabilitation. There is little or no knowledge on how health professionals respond to these people. OBJECTIVES: To investigate how nurses respond to people who do not wish to participate in cardiac rehabilitation and what influences the nurses´ approach towards these people. DESIGN: A qualitative study involving interviews and video-recordings using an analysis inspired by ethnographic principles and categorisation theory. SETTING: A rehabilitation clinic at a large hospital in the Capital Region of Denmark. PARTICIPANTS: Five cardiac nurses and 28 people with cardiac disease. METHODS: We video-recorded the first consultation people with cardiac disease attended regarding cardiac rehabilitation, where the nurses followed up on these people's recovery, medication, lifestyle and need for rehabilitation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the cardiac nurses. We asked the nurses about the purpose of the first rehabilitation consultation and how they handle people with cardiac disease who say no to rehabilitation. The nurses were shown video-clips with the people they had talked to in their consultation in order to facilitate a dialogue. RESULTS: When people with cardiac disease were reluctant to participate in rehabilitation, the nurses made an individual assessment of how much effort to put into motivating them, taking a complex range of factors into account. The effort among the nurses towards people with cardiac disease who decline rehabilitation was smaller in cases when the nurses believed an individual would benefit less from rehabilitation or have difficulty participating. It was important for the nurses to balance their motivational efforts with showing respect for people's autonomy. CONCLUSION: Even when nurses endorse rehabilitation, some people with cardiac disease decline rehabilitation. The nurses' recommendation of the rehabilitation programme is influenced by the knowledge they obtain about the people with cardiac disease during consultations.

A complex intervention for multimorbidity in primary care: A feasibility study.

AIM: To assess the feasibility of a patient-centered complex intervention for multimorbidity (CIM) based on general practice in collaboration with community health-care centers and outpatient clinics. METHODS: Inclusion criteria were age ≥18 years, diagnoses of two or more of three chronic conditions (diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and chronic heart conditions), and a hospital contact during the previous year. The CIM included extended consultations and nurse care manager support in general practice and intensified cross-sectorial collaboration. Elements included a structured care plan based on patients' care goals, coordination of services, and, if appropriate, shifting outpatient clinic visits to general practice, medication review, referral to rehabilitation, and home care. The acceptability dimension of feasibility was assessed with validated questionnaires, observations, and focus groups. RESULTS: Forty-eight patients were included (mean age 72.2 (standard deviation (SD) 9.5, range 52-89); 23 (48%) were men. Thirty-seven patients had two diseases; most commonly COPD and cardiovascular disease (46%), followed by diabetes and cardiovascular disease (23%), and COPD and diabetes (15%). Eleven (23%) patients had all three conditions. Focus group interviews with patients with multimorbidity identified three main themes: (1) lack of care coordination existed across health-care sectors before the CIM, (2) extended consultations provided better care coordination, and (3) patients want to be involved in planning their treatment and care. In focus groups, health-care professionals discussed two main themes: (1) patient-centered care and (2) culture and organizational change. Completion rates for questionnaires were 98% (47/48). CONCLUSIONS: Patients and health-care professionals found the CIM acceptable.

What the doctor doesn't know: Discarded patient knowledge of older adults with multimorbidity.

OBJECTIVES: Adherence to treatment has proven to require the involvement of patients in treatment and care planning. This process involves incorporating patient knowledge, or knowledge about the patients' everyday life, into the clinical encounter. This article explores the disclosure practices of such knowledge from older adults with multimorbidity. METHODS: This was an 18-month qualitative study among 14 older adults with multimorbidity living in Denmark. A thematic analysis was applied, focusing on perceptions of patient knowledge and disclosure practices among the participating patients. RESULTS: Older adults with multimorbidity have various reasons for not disclosing personal knowledge. The results present three different domains of what we termed discarded patient knowledge: (1) knowledge that had no direct biomedical relevance from participants' perspective; (2) knowledge considered too private; and (3) knowledge assumed to position one as inferior. DISCUSSION: The participants made judgments on what they believed was welcome in the clinical encounter, framing their knowledge within the purview of biomedicine. Participants' disclosure practices showed that personal knowledge is sometimes not recognized as important for health and care by participants themselves. Knowledge that could have influenced practitioners' understanding of the problem and provided different solutions, is argued to be discarded patient knowledge.

How Older Men With Multimorbidity Relate to Successful Aging.

OBJECTIVES: Research on successful aging gives limited attention to the role of suffering from multiple chronic conditions (multimorbidity) in combination with notions of masculinity. We address this by bringing into focus how older men with multimorbidity within the Nordic Model welfare system relate to successful aging. The objective is to bring new insights into key elements of how masculinity, multimorbidity and cultural context create alternative individual versions of successful aging. METHOD: The article draws on a long-term fieldwork (18 months) among older men (n=7), who were part of a larger study that also included older women. The fieldwork consisted of 28 interviews with participating men. These data were supplemented by 124 hr of informal chats and observations as well as 32 hr of clinical encounters with health services. Data analysis followed a thematic approach. RESULTS: Analysis revealed that older men with multimorbidity understood core components of successful aging, yet did not closely follow them, and instead came up with alternative, gendered interpretations. This process involved three themes centered around independency of: (a) unaided successful aging, (b) vicarious successful aging, and (c) masculine successful aging. DISCUSSION: Our study contributes to research on perceptions of successful aging with insights to the role of cultural context, gender and multimorbidity. Living with multimorbidity challenges the ability of the men to positively frame themselves as successfully aging older adults; however, they navigate this dilemma by constructing their own experiences in their own terms of independence.

Resources in vulnerable young adults: self-assessments during preventive consultation with their general practitioner in Denmark.

Inequality in health is increasing. People with many problems often lack energy to improve well-being and reduce their problems. This study analyses how psycho-socially challenged younger (20- to 44-year-old) patients described their own resources to reach lifestyle goals or alter life circumstances. Within the context of a randomized controlled trial, Danish participants had two structured preventive person-centred consultations with their general practitioner. Consultations focused on well-being, salutogenesis, resources, barriers and support of autonomy. Using the qualitative method: Systematic Text Condensation, we made thematic cross-analysis of patients' goal-specific resource statements described at the first consultation. Of the 209 patients, 191 (91%) chose one or two goals for a better life next year; nearly all (179) could recall and describe which resources they would use to reach their goal. We categorized resource statements into (i) personal constitution as 'willpower' and 'tenacity'; (ii) network, e.g. family; (iii) personal experience with identical or similar problems. Some patients needed to free up resources by handling psychological problems before being able to focus on lifestyle goals. The study demonstrates that patients with particular psycho-social problems could describe essential resources in a structured, salutogenic, preventive consultation with their general practitioner. Reflecting intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, these resources reflected dimensions of essential health theories like sense of coherence, self-efficacy and self-determination theory. Increased awareness of these resources seems essential for vulnerable patients by improving psychological well-being and optimism, thereby facilitating health-related changes. This may be an important step to reducing inequality in health.

Diagnostic knowing in general practice: interpretative action and reflexivity.

Background: Getting the right diagnosis is supposed to provide an explanation of a patient's health problem and inform health care decisions. As a core element of clinical reasoning, diagnosis deserves systematic and transparent analysis. Conceptual tools can make doctors become aware of and explore diagnostic knowing.Methods: We demonstrate diagnostic knowing analysed as interpretative and contextualised activity. Our analysis is based on Lonergan's theory of knowing, constituting the cognitive structures as experiencing, understanding, and judging, in a general practice case.Findings: Analysis makes the complexity of diagnostic knowing in this context more transparent, in this case concluding with four diagnostic labels: a corn, constipation, headache and atrial fibrillation. We demonstrate how a medically significant diagnosis does not necessarily evolve deductively from complaints. The opening lines from the patient give ideas of where to look for possible explanations - questions for understanding - rather than diagnostic hypotheses. Such questions emerge from the GP's experiences from meeting the patient, including imaginations and interpretations. When ideas and questions regarding diagnoses have been developed, they may be judged and subjected to reflection. Questioning may also emerge as transitory concerns, not extensively ruled out. Lonergan's theory demonstrated a strong fit with these aspects of diagnostic knowing in general practice.Implications: Analysis demonstrated systematic, transparent approaches to diagnostic knowing, relevant for clinical teaching. We argue that an interpretative understanding of diagnosis can change clinical practice, complementing hypothetico-deductive strategies by recognising additional substantial diagnostic modes and giving access to scholarly reflection.Key PointsDiagnosis is a core element of clinical reasoning, deserving systematic and transparent analysis beyond hypothetico-deductive reasoning or pattern recognitionDiagnostic knowing in general practice is a special instance of all human knowing with subjectivity, interpretation and reflexivity as essential elementsLonergan's theory for knowing based on experiencing, understanding, and judging allowed us to map, decode and recognise advanced acts of clinical reasoning We share our experiences of how these concepts gave us a tool for systematic analysis of the complexities taking place in the GP's office on an ordinary day.

'More constricting than inspiring' - GPs find chronic care programmes of limited clinical utility. A qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: As in other countries, Danish health authorities have introduced disease management programmes (DMPs) to improve care quality. These contain clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and guidelines for patient stratification based on doctors' assessments of disease severity and self-care. However, these programmes are challenged when patients have complex chronic conditions. AIM: To explore how GPs experience the clinical applicability of disease management programmes for patients with multiple chronic conditions and lowered self-care ability. DESIGN & SETTING: A qualitative study from general practice, conducted in rural areas of Denmark with economically disadvantaged populations. METHOD: Data were collected through case-based, semi-structured interviews with 12 GPs. The principles of systematic text condensation were used in the analysis. RESULTS: GPs found DMPs inadequate, particularly for patients with multiple conditions and lowered self-care ability. Their experience was that adhering to multiple programmes' CPGs resulted in too much medication, conflicting treatments, an overload of appointments, and fragmented health care. They disregarded stratifying according to guidelines because they deemed stratification criteria to reflect neither patients' need for self-care support, nor flexible referral options to hospitals and municipalities. Therefore, GPs were often solely responsible for treatment of patients with very complex chronic conditions. CONCLUSION: GPs found DMPs to be of limited clinical applicability due to challenges related to CPGs, patient stratification, and lack of adequate health services to support patients with complex healthcare needs. To increase the benefits of these programmes, they should be more flexible, and adjusted to the needs of patients with multiple chronic conditions and lowered self-care ability.

'I've put diabetes completely on the shelf till the mental stuff is in place'. How patients with doctor-assessed impaired self-care perceive disease, self-care, and support from general practitioners. A qualitative study.

OBJECTIVE: This paper investigated patients' experiences of disease and self-care as well as perceptions of the general practitioner's role in supporting patients with impaired self-care ability. DESIGN: Qualitative interviews with 13 patients with type 2 diabetes, concurrent chronic diseases, and impaired self-care ability assessed by a general practitioner. We analyzed our data using systematic text condensation. The shifting perspectives model of chronic illness formed the theoretical background for the study. RESULTS: Although most patients experienced challenges in adhering to recommended self-care activities, many had developed additional, personal self-care routines that increased wellbeing. Some patients were conscious of self-care trade-offs, including patients with concurrent mental disorders who were much more attentive to their mental disorder than their somatic diseases. Patients' perspectives on diseases could shift over time and were dominated by emotional considerations such as insisting on leading a normal life or struggling with limitations caused by disease. Most patients found support in the ongoing relationship with the same general practitioner, who was valued as a companion or appreciated as a trustworthy health informant. CONCLUSION: Patient experiences of self-care may collide with what general practitioners find appropriate in a medical regimen. Health professionals should be aware of patients' prominent and shifting considerations about the emotional aspects of disease. Patients valued the general practitioner's role in self-care support, primarily through the long-term doctor-patient relationship. Therefore, relational continuity should be prioritized in chronic care, especially for patients with impaired self-care ability who often have a highly complex disease burden and situational context. Key points Little is known about the perspectives of disease and self-care in patients with a doctor-assessed impaired ability of self-care. • Although patients knew the prescribed regimen they often prioritized self-care routines that increased well-being at the cost of medical recommendations. • Shifting emotional aspects were prominent in patients' considerations of disease and sustained GPs' use of a patient-centred clinical method when discussing self-care. • Relational continuity with general practitioners was a highly valued support and should be prioritized for patients with impaired self-care.

The effect of structured personal care on diabetes symptoms and self-rated health over 14 years after diabetes diagnosis.

AIMS: To explore the effect of structured personal care on diabetes symptoms and self-rated health over 14 years after diabetes diagnosis while patients are gradually diagnosed with other chronic conditions (multimorbidity). METHODS: Post hoc analysis of the Danish randomized controlled trial Diabetes Care in General Practice including 1381 patients newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The effect of structured personal care compared with routine care on diabetes symptoms and self-rated health was analysed 6 and 14 years after diagnosis with a generalized multilevel Rasch model. RESULTS: Structured personal care reduced the overall likelihood of reporting diabetes symptoms at the end of the intervention (OR 0.79; 95% CI: 0.64-0.97), but this effect was not explained by glycaemic control or multimorbidity. There was no effect of the intervention on diabetes symptoms after 14 years or on self-rated health after 6 years or 14 years. CONCLUSIONS: Structured personal care had a beneficial effect on diabetes symptoms 6 years after diagnosis, but not on self-rated health at either follow up point. To optimally manage patients over time it is important to supplement clinical information by information provided by the patients.

How general practitioners perceive and assess self-care in patients with multiple chronic conditions: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: It is not known how general practitioners (GPs) perceive the concept of self-care and how they assess self-care ability in patients with multiple chronic conditions. As a part of the strategy to improve the care of people living with chronic conditions, disease management programs in Denmark require GPs and other health care workers to assess and support patients' self-care ability. The aim of the present study was to explore GPs' perceptions and assessment of self-care ability in patients with multiple chronic conditions who have difficulty following a given treatment. METHODS: A qualitative study conducted through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 12 GPs in rural areas of Denmark with economically disadvantaged populations. The interviews involved 36 complex patient cases selected by the GPs themselves. Our analysis followed the principles of systematic text condensation. RESULTS: Most GPs in our study had a health-related perception of self-care, but some had a broader perception encompassing the situational context of the patient's life. The GPs' assessments of patients' self-care ability were based on information from the ongoing and often long-term relationships with the patients. GPs identified four major factors that influenced patients' self-care ability, which accumulated and fluctuated over time: multimorbidity, cognitive resources, material resources, and the patients' social contexts. CONCLUSIONS: The GPs in this study had dual perceptions of self-care, related to both the chronic health conditions and to the broader situational contexts of their patients' lives. GPs' assessments of self-care ability depended largely on their experiences from the doctor-patient relationship, and they emphasized that the factors affecting self-care ability were highly dynamic over the patient's lifetime. However, these findings might be resisted by the Danish disease management programs, which tend to have a static and more narrow, health-related view of patient self-care. The Danish programs require GPs to assess self-care ability upfront at the beginning of treatment and do not consider whether a relationship with the patient is established. If GPs' perceptions and assessments of self-care ability are not included in chronic disease management models, there is a risk that they vill be insufficiently implemented in general practice.

Antibiotic treatment failure when consulting patients with respiratory tract infections in general practice. A qualitative study to explore Danish general practitioners' perspectives.

BACKGROUND: Prescribing antibiotics for acute respiratory tract infections (RTIs) is common in primary healthcare although most of these infections are of viral origin and antibiotics may not be helpful. Some of these prescriptions will not be associated with a quick recovery, and might be regarded as cases of antibiotic treatment failure (ATF). OBJECTIVES: We studied antibiotic treatment failure in patients with acute RTIs from a general practitioner (GP) perspective, aiming to explore (i) GPs' views of ATF in primary care; (ii) how ATF influences the doctor-patient relationship; and (iii) GPs' understanding of patients' views of ATF. METHODS: Qualitative study based on semi-structured, recorded interviews of 18 GPs between August and October 2012. The interviews started with discussion of a unique case of acute RTI involving ATF, followed by a more general reflection of the topic. Interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: In patients with acute RTIs, GPs proposed and agreed to a medical definition of antibiotic treatment failure but believed patients' views to differ significantly from this medical definition. GPs thought ATF affected their daily work only marginally. GPs used many communicative tools to maintain trust with patients in cases of ATF, but they did not consider such incidents to affect the doctor-patient relationship adversely. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest a possible communication gap between doctors and patients, partly due to a narrow medical definition of ATF. Studies describing patients' views are still missing. General practitioners' experiences and views on antibiotic treatment failure in acute respiratory infections or its effects on the doctor-patient relationship have not been studied previously.