Why Do Primary Care Physicians Propose Medical Care to Patients With Medically Unexplained Symptoms? A New Method of Sequence Analysis to Test Theories of Patient Pressure

Abstract

The findings are incompatible with the influential assumption that physicians offer medical care to patients with unexplained symptoms because the patients demand treatment for a physical disease. Instead, the reason why many of these patients receive high levels of medical care should be sought by investigating the motivations behind physicians' responses to patients' symptom presentation.