Primary health care in Italy: from medical behaviour to teamwork

Abstract

Primary health care represents an essential area in relation to health protection: its purposes are, on the one hand, health promotion, on the other hand the possibility to resort only if necessary to hospital care. In the novel National Collective Agreement, new teamwork forms of organization are introduced; for example, the obligatory Territorial Functional Aggregation: an organizational Unit which general practitioners and general paediatricians join to. The article by Scala et al. (see page 17), about an experience of primary health care, focuses the necessity to plan new organizational forms of work for teams oriented to realize efficient and effective answers to population needs: the phases of the activities in équipe are analysed, lingering on lights and shadows of the team.