Table 3 Most common reasons for sending a stool sample to microbiology in diarrhoea

GP16

“I would send microbiology samples if people had persistent diarrhoea, which would mean a week or more depending on the person.... If someone has presence of blood or systemic symptoms that’ll be the next best common.”

GP5

“Duration of diarrhoea, the general health of the patient, so if they are not quite right and that’s gone on for longer than a week. I tend to use one week as my guideline.”

GP18

“Yeah, I mean it’s really I suppose if I have a high index of suspicion that there’s going to be something there. So travel abroad would be an indication to do it quite soon probably. If it’s been going on for longer than a week I would probably do it. Again I guess if there was a sort of a concern that there might be a definite cause. So somebody might say well we’ve been out, we went out for a meal or we went for a barbecue and three of the family have got diarrhoea then I probably would send stool specimens in that situation.”

GP20

“If the diarrhoea has been going on for more than two weeks or if the patient is very ill.”

GP10

“The most one that I’ve done is for prolonged diarrhoea really.”

GP13

“There are only two real reasons, one is, the two commonest by far is prolonged diarrhoea or the diarrhoea following travel abroad.” Interviewer: And for prolonged diarrhoea what would your definition be?

GP13

“Over a week.”

GP4

“If there had been recent travel abroad, you know, particularly somewhere that had a higher infection risk. The duration of time it’s been going on for, and I suppose whether I knew that there was something going around that I’d seen a lot of people with, that would make me send a stool specimen perhaps more sooner than I otherwise might.”

GP14

“Often if symptoms are going on, you know, a week, ten days. If somebody’s been abroad and is unwell, systemically, they’re the main reasons really I would think.”

GP17

“Most commonly it would be an adult, although sometimes children if it’s very prolonged, but most commonly it’s adults with a longer than usual episode of diarrhoea or if they’re markedly unwell with it.”

GP15

“If the diarrhoea was very short term, unless there was an obvious thing that I was worried about I would, forgive me saying, just let it run. And yeah, I suppose if people are clinically well in themselves thinking about it and they say they’ve had some diarrhoea and you go through a careful history and there’s no obvious cause, I would probably let that be for four or five days before I sent a sample.”

GP19

“I would think probably someone whose diarrhoea isn’t settling. Is having it prolonged, for a prolonged period.”