Impact of family physicians' practices upon the quality of family medicine health care services at model primary health care centers in Baghdad City

Abstract EN

Objective(s):To evaluate the family physicians' practices and to measure its impact upon the quality of family medicine health care in Baghdad City model primary health care centers.

Methodology:Adescriptive study, using the evaluation approach,has evaluated the impact of family physicians' practices upon quality of healthcare in Baghdad's Model Primary Health Care Centers of Family Medicine.

It is carried out during 15th of May – 20th of August 2017.

The study is conducted at five model primary health care centers of family medicine from two districts; AL-Rusafa and AL-Kurkh.Sample size is calculated to be (76) family physicians.Convenient sample of (124) patients who are attending these primary health care centers to seek family health care services.Adopted structured self-administered questionnaire is used to collect data from the Family physicians.

The list of dual-forced items obtained through the Delphi process, which include "Do" or "Don't do".

Inpatient care is clarified with (25) statements,urgent care and minor procedures tested in (27) statements andambulatory care includes (16) statements.

The quality of health care questionnaire is developed for the purpose of the study.

The overall number of items included in the questionnaire is (18) items.

Internal consistency "split-half" reliability is obtained through computation of Cronbach's alpha correlation coefficient.

Content validity of the questionnaire is determined through panel of (10) experts.

Data are collected through the utilization of the questionnaire and the interview technique as means of data collection.

Data of both stages is entered to computer using Statistical Package of Social Science, Version (23.00) for windows(10) (SPSS-23) and are handled using descriptive statistical data analysis approach (frequencies, percentages, mean of scores, total scores and Cronbach's alpha correlation coefficient) and inferential statistical data analysis approach(simple linear regression).

Results:The study reveals that the majority of the family physicians has performance experienced inadequate of family health care practices.

The quality of family medicine health care services in Baghdad's primary health care centers of the patients' perspectives is poor (82.30%).The impact of family physicians' practices upon the quality of family medicine health care services in Baghdad City model primary health care centers presents that family physicians' practices have notmadenoteworthy change on the quality of family medicine health care services.

Recommendations: Family physicians can follow the family medicine practices' standards to provide quality of family medicine health care services.

The Ministry of Health Department of Primary Health Care can periodically monitor the implementation of family physicians' practices standards for the benefit of better quality of family medicine health care services.

The family medicine quality of health care services can be valued on a regular base for the benefits of the patients who are attending the primary health care centers to seek such care.