Primary care and the power of the health system to solve problems: a study from the professionals' view-point

• Published in: Atención primaria Vol. 39; no. 8; pp. 411 - 416
• Main Authors: Clèries Costa, Xavier, Sarrado Soldevila, Joan Josep, López Vicente, Pau
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Spain 01.08.2007
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Attitude of Health Personnel; Female; Focus Groups; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Nurses; Physicians; Primary Health Care; Problem Solving; Professional Competence; Qualitative Research; Time Factors; Workforce
• ISSN: 0212-6567
• DOI: 10.1157/13108615

To identify professionals' view of the problem-solving capacity of primary care in the health system. Interpretative study, based on the Grounded Theory method and the focus-group technique. Eight primary care centres. In all, 198 professionals: 86 physicians, 69 nurse and 43 who were not health professionals. Data were obtained by: open questions in the focus groups, recording and transcription of the contributions; division of the text into autonomous sense units; sense units grouped by their common characteristics; inductive definition of each category; relationship between categories and triangulation of inter-team data. The problem-solving capacity of professionals should be characterized by: care for the bio-psycho-social demands and needs of the population; the integration of the following dimensions of professional competence: communication and teamwork; the promotion of prevention and public education. However, health-care daily practice prioritised quantitative parameters linked to reactive actions that were distant from the singularity of patients' pathologies. The desired problem-solving capacity of primary health care is threatened by excessive quantitative measurement, by shortcomings in human resources and facilities, and by the well-known lack of time in health-care delivery.