Abstract
BackgroundMaps are important tools in healthcare delivery. In Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC), they are expected to be used to plan services and resources for defined geographical areas, delineate team practice areas, allocate healthcare workers to households and support service delivery and performance management.AimThis is a study of the use and value of maps and mapmaking in the delivery of healthcare services through Ward-Based Outreach Teams (WBOTs).SettingThis study was conducted between 2014 and 2016 in Mamelodi (South Africa), an urban settlement selected to begin the City of Tshwane’s WBOT implementation programme in 2013.MethodsThis study is based on three qualitative participatory mapmaking projects with WBOT healthcare professionals and workers. Data generated through mapmaking, focused group discussions, individual semi-structured interviews, reflective writing and feedback workshops were analysed thematically.ResultsThrough mapmaking and discussions about the maps, healthcare providers took ownership of the maps they were creating or viewing, added their own information onto the maps, voiced issues about their practice, generated new knowledge and shared ideas and solutions for challenges. These processes expanded the use and value of maps beyond assisting participants to gain insights into the context, people and organisations of their places of work.ConclusionMaps become creative learning tools that can be used in emergent ways to solve healthcare service and other problems when they are actively generated and engaged through facilitated discussion and reflection. This allows WBOTs to see maps as dynamic canvasses that they can use to improve service delivery.
Highlights
Maps are important tools in healthcare delivery
The ‘Local Institutional Support Assessment (LISA)’ project process assisted Community Health Workers (CHWs) to evaluate their work and plan further engagements with these organisations and institutions: By using these three layers, we can see where we are and where we can re-correct us by giving health talks or explaining to the http://www.phcfm.org
NB Only one creche for the whole area and it [the map] shows unemployment and unhealthy eating; it shows us the people who are not part of Ward-Based Outreach Teams (WBOTs), some are scared about license [shops trading illegally]
Summary
Maps are important tools in healthcare delivery. In public health, medical data maps generated with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are commonly used to study population health in the context of space and place.[1]. Maps are elemental to the design, planning and implementation of Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC). As an approach to health service delivery that combines the tenets of public health and clinical care,[10] COPC gives importance to place and space[11] in both health and healthcare service delivery as it seeks to render quality, person- and family-centred, generalist healthcare to people in defined geographic communities. In Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC), they are expected to be used to plan services and resources for defined geographical areas, delineate team practice areas, allocate healthcare workers to households and support service delivery and performance management
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