Organización de la Atención Primaria en tiempos de pandemia

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the adoption of drastic changes in primary care, modifying the organization and work dynamics previously established. From one day to the next, professionals had to adapt to the new situation to be able to attend cases and contacts tracing, to avoid contagion and to maintain attention to other health problems. At the beginning of the pandemic, professionals had to establish new practices and care circuits in primary care in an improvised way, due to lack of updated guidelines, without adequate means of protection, evaluating their risks and benefits on the fly. We present the main organizational changes in the first level of care and describe, from the point of view of patient safety and the consequences for patients and professionals of the priority care for COVID-19. Finally, we consider how to incorporate the knowledge acquired during the pandemic, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the adopted measures to maintain as much as possible a safe, accessible and quality primary care.