Someone who cares--patients' experiences concerning health examinations.

The aim of this inquiry was to gain an understanding of laymen's experiences and opinions about general health check-ups. Medical experts often draw attention to unwanted effects, especially the risk of creating worry and of recommending and even giving unnecessary medical treatment. By using a qualitative research method with unstructured interviews we wanted to explore the participants' conceptions of health, their expectations before and their perceived benefits after health checks and whether the check-up gave rise to negative feelings. The participants held broad views on health and, possibly as a consequence, also great expectations of health check-ups. Consequences of the check-ups were that examinees felt encouraged to change their life style, had learnt to handle risk factors for disease, and after some time, reported feeling better. The individual attention and care, which in general did not differ from other caring situations described in the literature, was highlighted as an important factor for a positive result. Worries afterwards either did not exist or could be rationalized by knowing the causes of abnormalities and receiving guidance from the medical staff.