Public Awareness and Perception of Family Medicine in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

BackgroundFamily medicine is a specialty that provides care for family members' physical, social, and psychological aspects regardless of age, gender, and health conditions. A family physician can manage a wide range of health conditions and prevent various diseases. However, there are scarce data on the awareness and perceptions of the Saudi population regarding family medicine; therefore, we aim to determine the awareness and perception of family medicine and family physicians in the population of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.MethodologyThis cross-sectional study was conducted in Jeddah and randomly enrolled 519 participants aged 18 years and older through an online self-administered survey. Microsoft Excel and SPSS were employed for the data entry and analysis.ResultThe analysis indicated that 86.7% of the participants had heard about family physicians, 55.1% recognized the family physician's role, 61.7% had never visited one, and 57.2% were unfamiliar with the locations of family medicine clinics.ConclusionThe results of this study demonstrated that the general population of Jeddah has moderate positive responses toward the role of a family physician as a vital element in the healthcare system. However, the majority of the participants had never previously visited a family physician and were unfamiliar with the locations of family medicine clinics.