The usefulness of distinguishing different types of general practice consultation, or are needed skills always the same?

We hypothesized that it might be important to distinguish different types of consultation in order to understand better how help is delivered in general practice. This paper provides preliminary data on the ways that consultations can differ in how they unfold, and on how such differences might affect the helping process and the outcomes of each consultation. Several types of general practice consultation were noticed amongst 210 transcripts. Having established adequate inter-rater reliability of the classification system, we explored the differences between consultations of three broad types: Psychosocial, Complex, and Straightforward. Some of the questions asked in this preliminary study included: 1) do certain sorts of doctor, or patient, engage in certain sorts of consultation? 2) are there any relationships between the type of consultation and its length, patient-centredness or outcomes? 3) are the correlations between process and outcome clearer within categories of consultation than they are if consultations are treated as homogeneous? Findings provide a foundation for further investigations.