The effects of patient's frequency of attendance and etiology of symptoms, on the General Practitioners wellbeing

Abstract Introduction The presence of Medically Unexplained Symptoms and a high Frequency of Attendance negatively affects the General Practitioners’ (GP) wellbeing. Although, overlapping between both phenomena is partial, with a number of frequent attenders reporting medically unexplained symptoms during consultation, there is no evidence on how GP's well-being it is affected by the specific main effects of these factors and their interaction. Evidence is also scant on the psychological processes explaining the negative impact of attendance and the etiology of symptoms on GP's wellbeing. Objective Drawing on the Job Demand-Control and the Conservation of Resource stress models, this paper tests the moderating effects of the GP’ perception of patient's attendance and etiology of symptoms on the relationship between patient's demands and feedback on the GP's wellbeing. Method A total of 105 volunteer GPs self-reported on the study variables through an experience sampling methodology after 898 patients’ consultation. Patients attendance and etiology of symptoms were categorized according to the physician self-perception and an external criterion (organizational records). Results Perception of Patients Frequent Attendance and Medically Unexplained Symptoms were positively related to physician's Emotional Exhaustion. Contrary to expected the test of the moderation effects of patients characteristics on the relation between patient's demands and feedback and the GP's emotional exhaustion were stronger for normal attenders compared with frequent attenders. An ad hoc study shows this unexplained result is related to the GP's expectations on Frequent vs. normal attenders’ behaviors. No significant results were found when the external criterion of classification was used. Conclusion Combined analysis of Frequency of Attendance and Etiology of Symptoms lead to a better understanding of the GP's decreased wellbeing. Also, the perception of the strain level (demands/positive feedback levels) associated to the consultation with different types of patients contribute to explain the consequences for the GP's wellbeing, especially when GP's expectations on patient's behaviors are violated.