How Caring Differently Eases GP Stress Levels

TOPLINE:

GPs with a stronger patient-centred orientation experienced lower perceived stress. Female GPs and those caring for vulnerable populations — such as migrants, patients with psychiatric vulnerabilities, or those with limited social support — reported higher stress levels, and a higher number of daily patient contacts were also associated with increased stress.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers conducted a cross-sectional study using online survey data from GPs across 24 European countries (November 2022 to January 2024), with a total of 3522 GPs (67.5% women) included in the final analysis.
Participants completed the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which measured perceived unpredictability, uncontrollability, and overload on a scale of 0-4 (score range, 0-40), and the Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale (PPOS), which assessed patient-centred vs disease-oriented approaches on a 6-point Likert scale.
Factors that facilitated or hindered person-centred care in daily practice (such as workload volume, time limitations, the number of patient interactions each day, practice organisation and teamwork, and organisational culture) were also evaluated.
Data on demographic and professional characteristics — including sex, age, years of experience, specialist training, practice size, payment system, and perceived responsibility for vulnerable patient populations — were also collected.
Relationships between perceived stress levels and independent variables were analysed.

TAKEAWAY:

Female GPs reported 1.51 points higher on the PSS than male counterparts, and each additional year of age was associated with a 0.05-point reduction in perceived stress.
GPs with 31-40 daily patient contacts scored 0.78 points higher, those with 41-55 contacts scored 1.36 points higher, and those with more than 55 contacts scored 1.18 points higher on the PSS than those with up to 30 contacts per day.
GPs caring for the above-average number of patients with migration backgrounds scored 1.04 points higher, those with limited social support scored 0.97 points higher, and those with psychiatric vulnerabilities scored 1.17 points higher on the PSS.
A more patient-centred orientation was associated with lower perceived stress levels, with every 1-point increase in the average PPOS score corresponding to a 1.42-point decrease in the PSS score.

IN PRACTICE:

“Interventions aimed at reducing GP stress should include training programs. These programs should foster practice environments that encourage a patient-centred orientation, which may help reduce stress,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

This study was led by Katarzyna Nessler, Department of Family Medicine, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Kraków, Poland. It was published online on April 14, 2026, in the European Journal of General Practice.

LIMITATIONS:

Only associations, not direct causal relationships, could be identified. The voluntary submission of data made it impossible to obtain precise national population figures and calculate country-specific minimum sample sizes. The study relied on GPs’ estimates of their practice populations and the average practice population nationwide rather than on objective patient population data. GPs’ training and system-level factors, which are difficult to quantify, may have influenced the results.

DISCLOSURES:

This study received support from a grant provided by the European General Practice Research Network. No relevant conflicts of interest were disclosed by the authors.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.