Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Provision of emergency care is an integral part of general practice, and family health physicians play a crucial role in the management of medical emergencies.
OBJECTIVE:
To evaluate the emergency health care services delivery at PHC level in family Health centers in Baghdad city, in terms of knowledge, attitudes and practices of the physicians (service providers) towards emergency service.
METHODOLOGY:
A cross-sectional study done in 22 Family Healthcare Centers, targeting all doctors who work in these centers who accepted to participate, 86 out of 100 agreed to participate. A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain the basic characteristics of participants in addition to assessing their knowledge, attitudes and practices.
RESULTS:
Fifty nine percent of participants disagreed that emergency cases can be effectively managed in primary health care settings while 52.3% had the feeling of adequate self-confidence to respond to emergency cases at the primary care level. Only thirty three percent of participants had positive attitude and 73.3% had fair/good practice, while there were no statistically significant associations between practice scores or attitude scores with other variables.
CONCLUSION:
lack of confidence among some of the interviewed Family physicians of their capabilities in providing emergency services, with fair practice levels and negative attitudes regarding management of emergency cases.
Keywords
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