COMPREHENSIVE CARE: THE INTEGRAL ROLE OF FAMILY PHYSICIANS IN PATIENT WELL-BEING

Abstract

With growing concerns regarding health equity, accessibility, and sustainability of health systems, there is a critical need to mobilise a trained health workforce to provide necessary care in low-resourced communities. A possible solution is community-based primary care teams led by family physicians, akin to the “health house” model in Iran and the Family Health Strategy in Brazil. Family physicians provide key aspects of primary care—first contact care, comprehensive care, coordination, and personalisation of care—enabling them to lead community-based primary care teams (P. MF Rahman et al., 2023). Community-based care teams led by family physicians could adequately address health concerns in low-resourced communities while optimally utilising a trained health workforce. To explore the possibilities of family physician-led primary care teams to provide necessary care in low-resourced communities, three patients’ stories are presented who experienced diverse care at community clinics in South India.

Aging causes various health problems in older people that can decrease their quality of life (QOL). Such medical problems cannot be solved solely by healthcare professionals, because they can be connected to psychosocial problems, reinforcing the need for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) (Ohta et al., 2021). Multiple health problems must be approached by various healthcare professionals, each with different knowledge. For example, medical professionals must effectively deal with multimorbidity, and care professionals need skills to support older people by collaborating with families and social support systems. Medical care must transition from hospitals to clinics and communities, and community care prevent health problems from escalating to a higher care level. Therefore, communities must be able to independently address health problems.