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Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey

Background: Primary care plays a key role in pandemics like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020. We aimed to investigate the challenges faced and the solutions implemented in primary care. Methods: One hundred and twenty-one general practitioners in Germany completed the online survey. We used open ques...

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Autores principales: Eisele, Marion, Pohontsch, Nadine Janis, Scherer, Martin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8206267/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34150788
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.613537
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author Eisele, Marion
Pohontsch, Nadine Janis
Scherer, Martin
author_facet Eisele, Marion
Pohontsch, Nadine Janis
Scherer, Martin
author_sort Eisele, Marion
collection PubMed
description Background: Primary care plays a key role in pandemics like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020. We aimed to investigate the challenges faced and the solutions implemented in primary care. Methods: One hundred and twenty-one general practitioners in Germany completed the online survey. We used open questions to examine challenges experienced and solutions implemented during the early pandemic and chose qualitative content analysis to extract and describe the meaning of the answers. We derived deductive categories from the research questions and formed inductive categories during the material reviews. Results: Main challenges were: insufficient information, lack of protective equipment, need to restructure practice procedures and insufficient individual and structural pandemic preparedness, resulting in secondary challenges: fear of infection, impaired patient care, aggravated steering of patients, difficult cooperation with external entities and a not viable hygiene concept advised by authorities. Strategies to address these challenges included establishing regular team-meetings to develop new solutions, focusing on few reliable sources of information, working in alternating shifts, increasing telemedicine, establishing window and open-air practices and building networks with other health care providers. Respondents criticized the lack of consideration of their experiences in planning pandemic measures within primary care. Conclusions: General practitioners successfully applied pragmatic and creative strategies in their practices during the early phase of the pandemic. Among these, communication within and between practices emerged as a key strategy. These strategies should be provided with pandemic preparedness plans. The lacking consideration of the primary care providers' experiences in planning and implementing pandemic measures needs to be addressed by stakeholders.
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spelling pubmed-82062672021-06-17 Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey Eisele, Marion Pohontsch, Nadine Janis Scherer, Martin Front Med (Lausanne) Medicine Background: Primary care plays a key role in pandemics like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020. We aimed to investigate the challenges faced and the solutions implemented in primary care. Methods: One hundred and twenty-one general practitioners in Germany completed the online survey. We used open questions to examine challenges experienced and solutions implemented during the early pandemic and chose qualitative content analysis to extract and describe the meaning of the answers. We derived deductive categories from the research questions and formed inductive categories during the material reviews. Results: Main challenges were: insufficient information, lack of protective equipment, need to restructure practice procedures and insufficient individual and structural pandemic preparedness, resulting in secondary challenges: fear of infection, impaired patient care, aggravated steering of patients, difficult cooperation with external entities and a not viable hygiene concept advised by authorities. Strategies to address these challenges included establishing regular team-meetings to develop new solutions, focusing on few reliable sources of information, working in alternating shifts, increasing telemedicine, establishing window and open-air practices and building networks with other health care providers. Respondents criticized the lack of consideration of their experiences in planning pandemic measures within primary care. Conclusions: General practitioners successfully applied pragmatic and creative strategies in their practices during the early phase of the pandemic. Among these, communication within and between practices emerged as a key strategy. These strategies should be provided with pandemic preparedness plans. The lacking consideration of the primary care providers' experiences in planning and implementing pandemic measures needs to be addressed by stakeholders. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8206267/ /pubmed/34150788 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.613537 Text en Copyright © 2021 Eisele, Pohontsch and Scherer. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Medicine
Eisele, Marion
Pohontsch, Nadine Janis
Scherer, Martin
Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title_full Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title_fullStr Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title_full_unstemmed Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title_short Strategies in Primary Care to Face the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey
title_sort strategies in primary care to face the sars-cov-2 / covid-19 pandemic: an online survey
topic Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8206267/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34150788
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.613537
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