[Prioritization strategies in the care of multimorbid patients in family medicine].

The aging of the population together with the increasing life expectancy lead to a drastic increase in the number of patients with multi-morbidity (MM). Caring for these patients is time-consuming and the treatment of multiple conditions might be burdensome. Therefore both general practitioner (GP) and patients need to establish priorities and, among others, to decide which pathology to treat primarily or to which treatment to renounce. How they do this is currently unknown. This qualitative study based on individual interviews reports prioritization's strategies used by five GPs and five of their patients in Switzerland. Our study underlined the importance of the discussion between GPs and their patients and the use of the shared decision-making in the prioritization process.