Interdisciplinary family doctor team building and its management in urban community health service: perspectives from primary health workers

Abstract

Objective To survey the perspectives from primary health workers on the building and management of interdisciplinary family doctor team in urban community health service. Methods Primary health workers from 24 community health centers of 14 provinces were selected to participate in a questionnaire survey on March 2016. The attitude and satisfaction of participants with interdisciplinary family doctor team in urban community health setting were surveyed and analyzed. Results There were 765 questionnaires were distributed and 738 valid ones were returned with a retrieve rate of 96.5%. The survey showed that 70.73%(522/738)of participants supported the interdisciplinary family doctor teamwork, while the overall satisfaction with items regarding its building and management was 48.61% (2 870/5 904). Participants were mostly dissatisfied with performance appraisal and incentive mechanism (32.25%), autonomy of team (40.92%), job division of team members (44.44%) and rationality of professional allocation in the team (48.78%). There were significant differences in overall satisfaction rate among primary health workers in different positions and from different regions (χ2=176.86 and 57.17, both P<0.05). The overall satisfaction of participants in western regions was only 35.65% (636/1 784) and that of public health workers was 43.91% (534/1 216). Conclusion Currently, the building and management of interdisciplinary family doctor team in urban community health service are in a initial stage, although its importance has been recognized. Team composition, responsibility of various team members and effective incentive mechanism should be further improved, and more attention should be paid to western regions and for public health workers. Key words: General practitioner; Community health service; Evaluation studies