A comparative study to evaluate Primary Health Care centers with Family and non-family Medicine doctors in Basra
Pages : 1502-1510Download PDF
In recent years, family medicine has been applied in primary health care centers and a number of family doctors have been working in these centers. However, the number of family doctors is not enough to cover all the centers and the rest of the experience is limited to specific centers in Iraq as well as in the province of Basra
Aim of the study: it’s to compare between primary health care centers operated by the family medicine system and other non-family medicine centers through evaluating the different services provided by both types of the centers.
Methodology: the study is a cross sectional study conducted in 24 primary health care centers in Basra governorate during May 2017. A total of 12 primary health care centers in Basra with at least one family medicine doctor were included in the study in addition to another 12 primary health care centers directed by a general practitioner and had no family medicine doctor.
Results: The study found a big difference in the load of primary health care centers attendees per primary health care center and per doctor between both types of the centers. The majority of the non family medicine centers were found by the study to be badly documenting the symptoms, examination notes of the patients with non communicable diseases and the investigations done for the patients. In addition, both types of the primary health care centers were found to be bad in using the available protocols of treatments.
Conclusions and recommendations: The family medicine centers are found by the present study to be not fulfilling the standard criteria of Iraqi Ministry of Health in comparing the services provided with the non family medicine ones. Therefore, a program for developing the capacity of family medicine and primary health care doctors is recommended by the study which includes strengthening of the leadership and research strategies in Basra. In addition, focusing on strengthening of the current weaknesses found by the study should be included.
Keywords: Family medicine etc.