General practitioners’ strategies to identify alcohol problems: A focus group study
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To explore general practitioners' (GPs') experiences with addressing alcohol in the consultation without prior invitation from the patient. DESIGN AND SETTING: Two focus group interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 13 Norwegian GPs in the Stavanger region. Participants were invited to talk about situations where the doctor initiated discussion of alcohol. Systematic text condensation was applied for analysis. RESULTS: Participants presented a broad range of examples of what made GPs initiate discussion of alcohol, how they brought up the subject, and what happened when they did so. Sometimes they were just acting on a hunch. Family members were also occasionally prompting the doctor to act, or recent serious incidents worked as cues for asking. Routinely taking or creating an opportunity to explore was also common. Directly confronting the patient was a challenging task, and the participants disclosed experiences of how this had been achieved. CONCLUSIONS: Pragmatic case-finding appears to be a field of competence which can be further developed, but should be adapted to the clinical setting and the GP's personal style. It is suggested that strategies for dealing with alcohol problems in general practice should be based on a proper understanding of this specific medical context, and be adaptable to different clinical situations and the individual patient.
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Both GPs and nurses in 6 qualitative studies expressed concern about negative reactions from patients when discussing alcohol issues.
“Both GPs and nurses in 6 qualitative studies expressed their concern about negative reactions from patients when discussing alcohol issues [49, 84, 86, 89, 92, 105].”
Data from 6 quantitative and 1 qualitative study indicated that GPs believed in the effectiveness of brief interventions.
“data from 6 quantitative and 1 qualitative studies point otherwise [23, 64, 70, 73, 86, 106, 110].”
From Factors influencing the implementation of screening and brief interventions for alcohol use in primary care practices: a systematic review using the COM-B system and Theoretical Domains Framework (2021) · cites this paper as [86]
The Material and methods (p. 3) establish that this is a qualitative focus-group study, but the passages found do not report that its GPs believed brief interventions were effective. The Introduction (p. 2) says GPs saw identifying and treating alcohol problems as their responsibility; that is not a statement about the effectiveness of brief interventions. Searches for GPs’ beliefs about brief-intervention effectiveness found no supporting passage. (LLM, conf=0.72)
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The general practitioner as lifestyle advisor. A focus group study exploring case story discussions
Abildsnes, E. (2012) · NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives
- Authors
- Lid, T. G., & Malterud, K.
- Affiliations
- Stavanger University Hospital (NO)
- University of Bergen (NO)
- Corresponding author
- Lid, Torgeir Gilje
- Venue
- Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2012-05-29
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 64-69
- ISSN
- 0281-3432 (ISSN-L)
- 1502-7724
- PMC
- PMC3378006
- OpenAlex
- W2135689211
- Cited by
- 44
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 3.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Primary Care and Health Outcomes
- Keywords
- alcohol problems, general practitioners, alcohol screening, case finding, primary care, physician experience
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Alcoholism, Attitude of Health Personnel, Family Practice, Female, Humans, Male, Medical History Taking, Middle Aged, Norway, Focus Groups, Alcohol-Related Disorders, Young Adult
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