"widespread impression" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is used to refer to an idea that is very common and accepted by a large number of people. For example: "There is a widespread impression that the economy is improving."
There's a widespread impression that D.M.V. employees consider their customers' time worthless.
This has created the widespread impression that the state is not getting its due.
Contrary to widespread impression, most luggage arrives safely and on time.
Contrary to a widespread impression, the recent uptick in America's productivity raises more questions than it answers.
Yet the widespread impression in the Middle East is that the lion has turned into a pussycat.
These incidents have compounded a widespread impression among the people of Baghdad that the Americans are careless of Iraqi lives.
The companies' reports, however, seemed to contradict earlier surveys of farmers' intentions and widespread impressions that the controversy over biotechnology is significantly damping farmers' enthusiasm for such crops.
That sensitivity is partly the result of a widespread domestic impression that America's war on terrorism has actually been an assault on Islam.
Correction of acute and severe hyponatremia is lifesaving; however, despite the widespread clinical impression that correction of less severe hyponatremia is also worthwhile, evidence-based data demonstrating clinical benefit are limited [5].
More importantly, it is a widespread clinical impression that its success in everyday practice has been less triumphant than might have been anticipated on the grounds of randomized controlled trials (International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot 2007; Papanas and Maltezos 2007).
The impression is widespread that people in journalism and business help him at a critical point and are then discarded.
