ABSTRACT
Since December 2019, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly swept across the country, posing great challenges to the public health in China. In the epidemic prevention and control, primary care practitioners play a very important role in patient triage, home-based visit, follow-up as well as screening at the checkpoints. However, due to the lack of necessary protective equipment and heavy workload, primary care practitioners are facing great challenges in containing the epidemic outbreak. Based on the relevant guidelines and practice in primary care, this article summarizes the challenges primary care practitioners encountered and coping strategies for containing the epidemic outbreak in primary care settings to provide reference for improvement of their working quality.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: To understand why primary physicians prescribe antibiotics for some cases of acute upper respiratory infections and to explore the factors that influence their prescribing. METHODS: Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. Participants were 12 primary physicians in the maximum variety sample. RESULTS: Interviewees were identified the problems of antibiotics abuse and misuse in Korea. Primary physicians were certain that patients will benefit from antibiotics and prescribe for the patients' expectation of fast relief. Doctors are mostly comfortable with their prescribing decisions by their clinical experiences. They are also more likely to prescribe antibiotics in pressures of time and in competitive clinical environment. CONCLUSION: Multiple factors are involved in primary physicians' decision of their prescribing for acute upper respiratory infections. Further interventions to reduces prescribing would need to improve identification of patients at risk of complications and be workable in busy clinical situations. Repeating evidence for lack of effectiveness and lack of efficiency in general might be helpful.