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The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint

Pandemics are a significant stress test for a country’s economic, political and health systems. An effective pandemic response demands a multi-pronged and multi-layered approach, comprising surveillance, containment, border control, as well as various social and community measures. In the wake of th...

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Autores principales: Lee, Jie Qi, Loke, Wayren, Ng, Qin Xiang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7551144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32635633
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8030198
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author Lee, Jie Qi
Loke, Wayren
Ng, Qin Xiang
author_facet Lee, Jie Qi
Loke, Wayren
Ng, Qin Xiang
author_sort Lee, Jie Qi
collection PubMed
description Pandemics are a significant stress test for a country’s economic, political and health systems. An effective pandemic response demands a multi-pronged and multi-layered approach, comprising surveillance, containment, border control, as well as various social and community measures. In the wake of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has now infected more than 7 million people worldwide, strict quarantine measures are a commonplace, and a third of the world’s population have now gone into some form of lockdown. With the exception of border control, all these response measures involve the contributions of family physicians and general practitioners (GPs) in one way or another. Primary care physicians form and lead the primary care network, which in turn forms the backbone of any healthcare system. Being the first point of contact for a significant proportion of patients, primary care physicians play an essential strategic function in the fight against disease, both during peacetime and in the event of a public health crisis. In this commentary, we examine and propose some of the key roles that they play in a pandemic, drawing examples from the current COVID-19 pandemic and past experiences. COVID-19 has showed us that the world is grossly unprepared for a pandemic, both in terms of our global management and the structure of our current primary health care systems, and this should provide the impetus for us to improve.
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spelling pubmed-75511442020-10-16 The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint Lee, Jie Qi Loke, Wayren Ng, Qin Xiang Healthcare (Basel) Commentary Pandemics are a significant stress test for a country’s economic, political and health systems. An effective pandemic response demands a multi-pronged and multi-layered approach, comprising surveillance, containment, border control, as well as various social and community measures. In the wake of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which has now infected more than 7 million people worldwide, strict quarantine measures are a commonplace, and a third of the world’s population have now gone into some form of lockdown. With the exception of border control, all these response measures involve the contributions of family physicians and general practitioners (GPs) in one way or another. Primary care physicians form and lead the primary care network, which in turn forms the backbone of any healthcare system. Being the first point of contact for a significant proportion of patients, primary care physicians play an essential strategic function in the fight against disease, both during peacetime and in the event of a public health crisis. In this commentary, we examine and propose some of the key roles that they play in a pandemic, drawing examples from the current COVID-19 pandemic and past experiences. COVID-19 has showed us that the world is grossly unprepared for a pandemic, both in terms of our global management and the structure of our current primary health care systems, and this should provide the impetus for us to improve. MDPI 2020-07-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7551144/ /pubmed/32635633 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8030198 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Commentary
Lee, Jie Qi
Loke, Wayren
Ng, Qin Xiang
The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title_full The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title_fullStr The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title_full_unstemmed The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title_short The Role of Family Physicians in a Pandemic: A Blueprint
title_sort role of family physicians in a pandemic: a blueprint
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7551144/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32635633
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/healthcare8030198
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