Survey on status quo of reception of pediatric patients by general practitioners in Longhua District of Shenzhen / 中华全科医师杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the status quo and related issues of reception of pediatric patients by general practitioners in community health centers in Longhua District of Shenzhen through qualitative and quantitative studies.Methods:In qualitative study, 10 general practitioners (GPs) from community health centers in Longhua District of Shenzhen were selected by the purpose sampling method for personal in-depth interviews. The interview contents were recorded and transcribed, then coded by Nvivo software. Theme frame analysis method was used for data sorting and theme extraction. Based on the results of qualitative interviews, the questionnaire was developed and distributed through the electronic questionnaire platform. The contents of the questionnaire included general information, the situation of pediatric patient reception in community health centers, the willingness and ability of GPs to receive children, the existing problems and the measures to promote receiving pediatric patients in community health centers.Results:The results of personal in-depth interviews with 10 GPs showed that the obtained information reached saturation. Through repeated reading, induction and analysis of the interview data, four themes were extracted ① GPs in community health centers received a large number of pediatric outpatients with common diseases; ② GPs in community health centers are willing to receive child patients, but they were lack of ability; ③ there were many problems of pediatric patients reception in community health centers; ④ training and incentive policies would help to promote child patient reception in community health centers. A total of 223 electronic questionnaires were collected, 219 of which were valid for analysis. All the community health centers in Longhua District received pediatric patients, the number accounted for 20%-60% of the total outpatients; 84.5%(185/219)of the responders were willing to receive child patients, 65.8% (144/219)of them assumed that the consulting ability was average. The main problems for GPs to receive pediatric patients were "insufficient training" (76.7%,168/219) and "lack of consulting ability" (55.3%,121/219). The important measures to promote GPs to receive child patients were to improve their own clinical competence (94.1%,206/219), to have clinical faculty with pediatric background mentoring at the community health center (74.9%,164/219), to improve the supporting facilities (42.9%,94/219) and continuous professional support (38.8%,85/219).Conclusion:The status quo of pediatric patient reception in the community of Shenzhen Longhua District is generally satisfactory. The main problems in this aspect are insufficient training for general practitioners and lack of clinical competence, which should be strengthened and improved in the future.