Gut feelings in general practice

Reason and feeling closely cooperate in general practitioners’ diagnostic thinking. GPs sometimes experience gut feelings in the patient contact. Researchers from the universities of Maastricht and Antwerp showed that most GPs take those feelings seriously and that these feelings can direct their diagnostic actions. Also medical disciplinary committees take the gut feelings seriously, witness the fact that in the Netherlands they reproached GPs en specialists regularly in the past ten years for not listening to their gut feelings. The researchers have established an international research agenda to further study and improve the diagnostic meaning of the gut feelings.