BibTeX

@inProceedings{kokkinakis-etal-2012-contextualisation-155530,
	title        = {Contextualisation of functional symptoms in primary health care},
	abstract     = {Background: a number of patients consulting primary health care have physical symptoms that may be labeled “medically unexplained”, i.e. absence of a demonstrable organic etiology. Common functional somatic symptoms (FSS) are irritable bowel, tension headache and chronic fatigue. FSS-patients are generally frustrated with the inability of health care to alleviate their illness. Health care staff often also feel frustration. The communication between patient and care giver is the key for coming to terms with the problem. Objective: to investigate how complex, vague and long-standing symptoms with no identified organic cause are put into context, interpreted and acted upon in primary health-care interactions. Two types of interventions are envisaged (i) methods for early identification of patients at risk of entering a vicious circle of functional symptoms and (ii) methods for re-interpreting symptoms in alternative and more purposeful ways. Methods: the project studies interactions between patients and nurses giving advice over telephone, consultations between patients and physicians, interviews and study patients' medical case notes. Eligible patients (18-65 y.o.) contact their primary health care centre by telephone, have had at least eight physical consultations with nurses or physicians in the last 12 months and if a majority of the symptoms within this time span had no clear organic or psychiatric cause. The project contains a number of subprojects, according to the type of data collected. Several methods of analysis will be used, mainly critical discourse analysis, phenomenologic-hermeneutic and computation linguistic analyses. (Expected) Results: using the collected data, we describe characteristics of the communication that takes place in these settings and the way symptoms and diseases are represented. This will facilitate the development of future interventions aimed at decreasing the morbidity due to FSS and give further insights into the problem. 
},
	booktitle    = {The 5th GENEVA Conference on Person-Centered Medicine. Geneva, Switzerland. },
	author       = {Kokkinakis, Dimitrios and Lidén, Eva and Svensson, Staffan and Björk Brämberg, Elisabeth and Määttä, Sylvia},
	year         = {2012},
}