Minor surgery in Bahrain’s primary care system

Abstract EN

Many primary care physicians do not perform minor surgery in spite of'its numerous advantages.

We set out to determine how many primary care physi-eians in Bahrain perform 21 different types of minor surgiealproeedures, what difficulties they experienced and their attitude towards minor surgery.

Ninety one of 109 physicians replied to a standardised question-naire.

Twelve of the 21 procedures were considered important to primary care, and only 8 were carried out by more than 50% ofphysicians.

There was no statistical difference between the performance of family physi-cians and general practitioners.

Fear of complication, lak of adequate training and time were thec commonest reasons given for not performing a certain procedure.

Our findings indicate that primary care physieians in Bahrain need to improve their minor surgical skills.