Table 2.

Patients’ problems prioritized during the focus groups

Rank	Problem	Score
1	Side‐effects of medication	27
2	Hypersensitivity for all kinds of substances, such as smoke, perfumes, dust, damp, etc.	23
3	Insufficient coaching and follow‐up with drug use by professionals	11
4	(Obscurity of) long‐term side‐effects of medication	10
5	Obscurity of causes of disease or individual attacks	9
6	Interference with social life	9
7	Co‐morbidity	7
8	Inadequate information and uncertainty on drug use	7
9	Fatigue	6
10	Lack of knowledge among general practitioners and pharmacists	6
11	Inadequate collaboration of health‐care professionals	4
12	High costs for medication, aids and house adaptation	4
13	Non‐understanding by social environment	3
14	Non‐understanding at school and work	3
15	Feelings of grief and frustration about physical constraints and social isolation	3
16	Little attention for alternative therapies in health‐care	3
17	Lack of patients’ empowerment	2
18	Inadequate collaboration between regular and alternative medicine	2
19	Non‐understanding by professionals	2
20	Inconvenience of drug use	2

The score refers to the number of ‘urgency points’ (paperclips) allocated to the problem by the participants.