The Roles and Challenges of the Primary Health Care Systems in Epidemic Management: a Scoping Review

Overview

Journal Prim Health Care Res Dev

Publisher Cambridge University Press

Specialties Health Services
Public Health

Date 2023 Sep 14

PMID 37705282

Authors

Elham Shami

Kamal Gholipour

Deniz Naghibi

Saber Azami-Aghdash

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background And Aim: During the early stage of pandemics, primary health care (PHC) is the first point of contact with the health system for people. This study aimed to find the leading roles and challenges of the PHC system in dealing with the outbreak of infectious diseases.

Methods: The current scoping review was conducted in 2022 using the Arkesy and O'Malley framework. A bibliographic search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases. Following a Google Scholar search, a manual search in some journals, reference checks for articles, and a review of organizational reports, websites, and other sources of information were also conducted. Data were analyzed using the content-analysis method.

Findings: Finally, 65 documents (42 articles and 23 reports, books, and news) were included in the study. Initially, 626 codes were extracted, and 132 final codes were categorized into eight main themes and 44 sub-themes. The main themes for the roles of PHC included: service provision, education and knowledge, surveillance, access, coordination and communication, management and leadership, infrastructure change and rapid preparation, and patient and community management. Regarding the challenges faced by PHC in the epidemic of infectious diseases, 24 key challenges were identified and categorized into four major areas.

Conclusions: Based on the results of the present study, there is a need for further studies to formulate and theorize the specific roles of PHC in managing infectious disease epidemics. The results of this study can be utilized by researchers and officials to inform their efforts in addressing this purpose.

Citing Articles

Primary healthcare nurses' experiences in managing chronic diseases during COVID-19 in the North West province.

Mboweni S Afr J Prim Health Care Fam Med. 2024; 16(1):e1-e12.

PMID: 39501862 PMC: 11447598. DOI: 10.4102/phcfm.v16i1.4491.

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