COVID-19 and primary care in six countries
| Autor: | Robert L. Phillips, Chris van Weel, John Campbell, William Hogg, Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Grant Russell, Patricia Huston |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
medicine.medical_specialty
Government lcsh:R5-920 Distancing Public health public health MEDLINE Front line communicable diseases computer.software_genre Triage Healthcare improvement science Radboud Institute for Health Sciences [Radboudumc 18] physicians family primary care Videoconferencing covid-19 Practice & Policy general practitioners Family medicine Pandemic medicine Business Family Practice lcsh:Medicine (General) computer |
| Zdroj: | BJGP Open, Vol 4, Iss 4 (2020) BJGP Open, 4 BJGP Open, 4, 4 BJGP Open |
| ISSN: | 2398-3795 |
| Popis: | With the focus of the COVID-19 pandemic on the many challenges in public health, acute and long-term care, what has happened within primary care has remained largely below the radar. Yet primary care physicians (family doctors and GPs) can constitute up to 50% of the medical workforce1 and are highly susceptible to contracting emerging infectious diseases themselves, as they are often the first point of contact people have with the health system.2 This article comments on what is happening to primary care provision in six well-resourced countries: Australia, New Zealand (NZ), Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. Although primary care has been on the front line with COVID-19 cases, this has come at great cost. In all six countries, primary care physicians participated in the initial assessment and triage of people with possible COVID-19, although how that was done varied between countries, and was rarely in the physician’s office (Table 1). They decided who could be managed at home, and who needed specialist referral or hospital admission. Physicians often deferred routine follow-up visits in their offices, instead offering patients remote assessments by telephone, email, and videoconferencing, and assisting in assessment centres. View this table: Table 1. Site of primary care assessment of potential COVID patients in six countries.a Countries differed, however, in terms of pre-existing universal health coverage, pandemic readiness, and the level of government and public support for public health measures. We define support for public health measures as endorsement and general abidance with travel restrictions, physical distancing, use of masks, and minimising numbers of social contacts. Of the six countries, Australia and NZ were the best prepared. Both had universal health coverage and up-to-date pandemic plans. In Australia, guidelines were in place for GPs for both pandemic influenza and public health emergencies.3,4 Widespread testing was rapidly established, and national and state governments assisted in the provision of personal … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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