Primary Health Care: Open Access

Primary Health Care and Doctors' Roles

Mouney P^{* *}Correspondence: Mouney P, Faculty of Health Sciences, Joanna Briggs Institute, Australia, Email:

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Introduction

In developing countries where the bulk of the population lives in rural areas, doctors must make significant adaptations to their jobs in order to ensure the health of the entire rural population. In Thailand, doctors in charge of rural district hospitals serve as hubs for other health-care facilities that serve the entire district's population. Community primary health care volunteers are being established to enhance the existing governmental health service network and to increase service coverage to remote communities in accordance with primary health care principles. As a result, doctors' duties have shifted [1]. Doctors must be good managers of health promotion and prevention programmes, effective hospital administrators, skilled trainers, and qualified researchers, in addition to being competent clinicians. They must not only work within the hospital, but also support the district's health professionals and activities, particularly community primary health care workers. However, they are currently graduates of standard medical schools, whose educational programmes do not effectively prepare them for their new positions in rural hospitals. It is necessary to reorient the existing health system, including its health workers. The formation of proper attitudes at all levels of health care is a vital component of this process. This is a difficult but challenging endeavour since it involves long-established medical organisations that adhere to traditional beliefs and practices [2,3].

A Primary Care Physician's Role in Your Health Care

At all levels of health care, health staff, including doctors, who serve in any national health system that adopts primary health care (PHC), will face changes in their roles. This topic focuses on doctors working in tiny public hospitals in remote rural regions who are using PHC to enhance their patients' health. The experiences of people working in district hospitals in rural Thailand illustrate the shifting roles of doctors. The doctor who serves as the director of a district hospital is responsible for the hospital's efficient and successful functioning in meeting the health needs of the entire area. The role of a rural doctor differs significantly from that of a doctor in a large metropolis or a provincial hospital. A district doctor must have sufficient knowledge and abilities in supporting primary health care in the community. He or she must be able to effectively promote community participation necessary for the development of PHC at the community level by mastering at least the following tasks: delegation of responsibility, authority, and resources to establish PHC in the community in a way that is linked to the people's real-life situation; assisting the establishment and functioning of community organisations; fostering individual responsibility for self-care and family care, adolescent health, and adolescent health. Medical schools have mostly followed the education and training programmes for doctors in the Western world's more industrialised countries. This type of schooling does not effectively equip graduates for the new types of jobs that are being created [4].

Some people believe that by completing a "self-referral" and going straight to a specialist instead of seeing a primary care doctor first, they can save time. The issue is that, while you may have a basic sense of the nature of the problem, you may not be consulting the appropriate specialist [5].

Let's imagine you've been experiencing pain in your chest that you believe is related to your heart. You visit a cardiologist, who examines you for cardiac problems. The findings aren't conclusive. So, what's next? Do you need to see a different cardiologist or a gastroenterologist? A primary care doctor has the knowledge and experience to oversee and guide your care, coordinating medical traffic and testing, and ruling out other potential causes of your symptoms.

References

1. Piyaratn, P. “Doctors' roles in primary health care.” Trop Doct 12.4 Pt 2(1982):196-202.
2. Taylor, C.E. “The doctor's role in rural health care.” Int J Health Serv 6.2(1976):219-30.
3. Colon-Gonzalez, M.C., et al. “Successes, challenges and needs regarding rural health medical education in continental Central America: a literature review and narrative synthesis.” Rural Remote Health 15.3(2015):3361.
4. Mooney, G., & Yule, B. “Perspectives on health economics. 3. Economics in action.” Fam Pract 2.1(1985):4-9.
5. HealthSpot “What is the Role of a Primary Care Physician in Your Healthcare.”