Capacity building of primary care physician working at remote Uttarakhand, India: An integrated tertiary care approach during COVID 19 pandemic

Strengthening primary care during this unprecedented pandemic of COVID-19 is an urgent demand for public health. It needs to relook into the healthcare machinery and reenergize the much overlooked primary and secondary tier in healthcare delivery to effectively combat COVID-19 and other similar epidemics. OBJECTIVES: Strengthening of primary care and enhance the skills and knowledge of primary care physician working at Community Health Center/Primary Health Center (CHC/PHC) in context of Family medicine and updating them in recent advancements in primary care management and COVID 19 guidelines for efficient delivery of primary care services. METHODOLOGY: Director general health services of Uttarakhand was intimated with the aim and objectives of this one-day hands-on workshop going to be conducted at All India institute of medical sciences. All Chief Medical Officers of the various districts had been communicated and sensitized for this noble cause. Total 30 primary care physicians attended the certificate program. This session commenced with a pre-test followed by the lectures, discussions and hands-on skills and ended with a post-test. RESULTS: Majority (60%) of the participants were male and 40% were female. A total of 30% had never attended any similar workshop in the past. 45% of them were never exposed to any hands-on training before. Only 10% of them were Postgraduates and the rest were only MBBS (undergraduate). As the scores were not normally distributed, Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test was applied for the dependent variable. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) found between pre and post-test results. CONCLUSION: Imparting continuing medical knowledge to the physicians has proved to be an effective tool in good clinical practice. The success of this intervention can be used to further develop and implement workshops and other training sessions to enhance the skills and knowledge of Primary Care Physicians in similar settings that face a shortage of well-equipped physicians.