Differences between rural and urban primary care units in Turkey: Implications on residents′ training

Abstract

Context:Family practice training takes place at primary care based training centers linked to Education and Research State Hospitals in Turkey. There is a discussion if these units are adequate to train primary care staff and if the patients of these units reflect the applicants of primary care.Aims:The aim of our study is to investigate the demographic characteristics, the effect of distance on primary care utilization, and most common diagnosis of the patients who applied to two different outpatient clinics: One urban and one rural.Settings and Design:Study was conducted from the electronic health records of the patients applied to outpatient clinics of Ankara Diskapi Yildirim Beyazit Training and Research Hospital Department of Family Medicine between 1 January and 31 December 2009.Results:Total number of patients applied to both of the outpatient clinics was 34,632 [urban clinic: 16.506 (47.7%), rural clinic: 18.126 (52.3%)]. Leading three diagnoses were upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), general medical examination (GME), and hypertension (HT) in the most common 10 diagnosis.Conclusion:In our study, the rural outpatient clinic is regarded as a primary care unit in the neighborhood of living area and the urban clinic as close to working environment. We found statistically meaningful differences in most common diagnosis, gender, age, and consultation time between the rural and urban clinics. According to our results, family practitioners’ field training should take place at different primary care units according to sociodemographic characteristics of each country.