Table 2 Thoroughness in consultation (Patient 4 and GP 2)

Patient 4, male 47 years old

GP2, female

Most important thing was she was able to listen. She listened to me when I said my symptoms were and then she talked me through, saying, “I’ve listened to your chest at the front. Your chest is clear. There’s nothing to see in your throat. Your nose is not blocked. So, let’s get these tests done.” So, the first consultation, “Let’s do these tests and make sure everything’s alright, blah, blah, blah.” Everything that I said she was able to check it and say, “This is this, this is this, this is this.” Then okay, if it wasn’t showing up as a regular cold and she couldn’t identify a virus as yet, “let’s do these tests to make sure it’s nothing else.’’ She also spoke to somebody on the “phone, not within the practice, but I think it was at [hospital] and confirmed things. So, it felt like everything she was doing was logical and that was…yeah, I was reassured. Especially when the tests came back and there was nothing untoward, so that was a relief

I think at the beginning he came in; he’d had a cough; I think he’d had some recent travel and I thought it was a chest infection hence we went for the antibiotic route. I think he then saw one of my colleagues, had a similar story, treatment and then it was this persistent cough at which point I was thinking oh what’s going on. Is this something else or is it just an allergic cough? I think that’s why I gave the steroids. I’m relieved to know that I’m true because I couldn’t …he was otherwise okay. He hadn’t lost weight; he hadn’t lost his appetite. He was otherwise stable, and I don’t think he’s a smoker, so I couldn’t. He was quite an unclear one because I couldn’t. From a cancer side yes, you’d be thinking he’s got a persistent cough and I think I did request a chest X-ray as well. So that was my cover but […] I think he was worried, and he was suffering more than anything. I don’t know, but I think it was more that he was getting frustrated that his cough wasn’t settling. I’m not sure we had any magic cures for it and that’s why he was coming back