OBJECTIVE Primary health care (PHC) is a vital in any community. Any health centre with a well implemented PHC program can stand the test of time in curbing under five mortality and morbidity. This study was therefore aimed at assessing the activities in a health centre located in a rural area in Enugu state and to determine the pattern and presentation of various diseases in the health centre....

BACKGROUND Telephone or text-message reminders have been shown to significantly reduce the rate of missed appointments in different medical settings. Since text-messaging is less resource-demanding, we tested the hypothesis that text-message reminders would be as effective as telephone reminders in an academic primary care clinic. METHODS A randomized controlled non-inferiority trial was cond...

OBJECTIVE To compare the demographics and risk factors of men who utilise the services of a municipal public sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic with those who utilise the services provided by a non-public men's STD clinic operated by a not for profit primary care clinic. METHODS A record based review of the characteristics and STD prevalence of men who visited a non-public STD clinic i...

INTRODUCTION This study assessed the impact of a rural primary care preceptorship on medical students' self-perceived ability to provide acute, chronic, and preventive care, to perform procedures, to communicate with patients, and to understand the community and healthcare system. METHODS Students were surveyed about their self-assessed skills on 11 major components (97 items) immediately bef...

BACKGROUND Recently, a revised telehealth legislation that allows direct doctor to patient teleconsultation was proposed in Korea. However, there have been some debates. This study aimed to examine the attitude of primary care physicians towards telehealth. METHODS A questionnaire asking attitude towards telehealth and revised telehealth legislation was self-administered to 1,988 registered m...

THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE THIN SLICE TECHNIQUE:OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH ON VIDEO RECORDED MEDICAL INTERACTIONS byTANINA S. FOSTERMay 2014Advisor: Dr. Shlomo SawilowskyMajor: Evaluation and ResearchDegree: Doctor of PhilosophyIntroduction: Observational research using the thin slice technique has beenroutinely incorporated in observational research methods...

OBJECTIVE Community participation is often described as a key for primary health care in low-income countries. Recent performance-based financing (PBF) initiatives have renewed the interest in this strategy by questioning the accountability of those in charge at the health centre (HC) level. We analyse the place of two downward accountability mechanisms in a PBF scheme: health committees electe...

PURPOSE To describe the coding and documentation practices of nurse practitioners (NPs) when using evaluation and management (E & M) codes in an academic primary care center. DATA SOURCES A randomized retrospective review of ten charts from a nurse-managed primary care clinic affiliated with a midwestern research-intensive university. CONCLUSION The findings demonstrate that the documentati...

A subsidized primary care clinic in Singapore wanted to evaluate the impact of different patient appointment apportionment and patient-doctor allocation strategies on the cycle time that their patients need to spend during their clinic visits. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is limited literature on such studies. This paper aims to fill this research gap via scientific evaluation o...

OBJECTIVE To identify characteristics of early arthritis units, that may be associated with better referral eficiency. METHODS A national survey of the 36 early arthritis units (EAU) in Spanish Rheumatology Units in 2004 (SERAP project). Survey collected information about general practitioners (GP) educational program to improve knowledge and practical skills of early arthritis, networking an...