When General Practitioners Say "I Don't Know": A Qualitative Study on the Construction of Lyme Borreliosis Diagnosis

Background: From the perspective of social science, diagnosis is not only a question of assigning a category, but also a process of producing knowledge. Aim:The aim of this article is to explore the construction of Lyme borreliosis (LB) diagnosis as a process, in a population of French general practitioners.Method: ReLyMeG was a French psychosocial and qualitative study conducted in 2021, which recruited 19 GPs as participants from different regions.Semi-directive interviews were conducted and then analyzed by conceptual categories analysis.Results: Results from ReLyMeG made it possible to identify three processes in GPs' practice: The process of construction, of deconstruction, and of categorization.Different kinds of uncertainty were distinguished, as well as different psychosocial strategies that GPs used to manage uncertainty. Conclusion:Exploring the multiple ways of managing uncertainty in the context of LB diagnosis made it possible to highlight some social identity issues concerning general practitioners, and to propose some possibilities for intervention with a view to improving their approach to uncertainty.