Discovering strengths in patients with medically unexplained symptoms - a focus group study with general practitioners.

Acknowledging patients' strong sides can bolster GPs' ability to help patients with medically unexplained symptoms. However, the epistemic disadvantage of generalist expertise makes this hard to achieve. It is difficult for GPs to integrate person-centered perspectives with biomedical knowledge due to the privileged position of the latter. This seems to indicate a need for system-level innovations to increase the status of person-centered clinical work. Key pointsMUS is challenging for both patients and GPs mainly because of the incongruence between symptoms and the dominating biomedical model.GPs' focus on pathology and loss of function can prevent them from discovering patients' strengths.Awareness of patients' strengths can make consultations less demanding for GPs and enable them to provide better help.A conscious effort is needed to discover patients' strengths.