Therapeutic education of COPD patients:: what does the general practitioner say?: Results of an automatic speech study analysis

Introduction Education in COPD is clearly recommended. The general practitioner (GP) plays a key role in COPD management, and his view on education in medicine is crucial for him to implement it. This work aims at exploring what is the GP's representation of education in COPD. Methods Twenty-seven GP were enrolled in this qualitative research focused on three points: "COPD patient", "COPD patient's education", "tools in COPD patient education". The interviews processing has been carried out by an ALCESTE software (Analysis of Co-occurrent Lexemes in the Simple Terms of a Text) that extracts the key significant structures of a text. Results Actually, the GPs do not really speak about therapeutic education, they have a rather fuzzy representation of it. They face, in their daily practice, a lack of patients' awareness of the disease, they call to mind an educational model group close to the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and the most adequate location for this education looks to be, for them, the hospital. The emotional dimension is noticed, targeted at the patient and his family circle. In their relationship with their patients, the GPs describe their part as more prescriptive than educative. Conclusion The GPs' speech analysis shows that education is not a part of their COPD management; the results of our study enable us to foresee the actions to carry out to develop the concept of COPD education in general practice.