Congratulations to Dr Claire Friedemann Smith, Professor Sue Ziebland, Dr Brian Nicholson (Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences) and Dr Sarah Drew (formerly at Oxford and now based at the London School of Economics and Political Science) for this recognition of their research. Their paper, published in September 2020 in the British Journal of General Practice ranked the best in the journal’s annual countdown for the top 10 most read research published in 2020.
In this work, the team performed a systematic review to understand more about the role of GPs’ gut feelings in clinical decision-making. They found that GPs pick up on multiple verbal and non-verbal cues from patients and the pooled odds of a cancer diagnosis were four times higher when gut feelings were recorded. This work therefore highlighted the value of these gut feelings, warranting further investigation as predictors of cancer.