Primary Care Healthcare Services Research Articles

Independent and effective care – district nurses’ experiences of prescribing drugs: A systematic qualitative literature review

Numerous countries in the world have chosen to allow district nurses to prescribe drugs to streamline the primary care process. This qualitative, systematic literature study aimed to examine district nurses’ experience of prescribing within primary care. The search followed the PRISMA-P search strategy, and the quality assessment of the nine articles was completed using the review template for assessing studies with qualitative methodology, using GRADE CERQual. The databases CINAHL, Pubmed, PsycINFO, and Scopus were used. The result shows that district nurses experience prescribing as crucial for being able to meet patient needs through holistic and person-centered care. Being able to sufficiently and efficiently meet patient needs contributed to increased job satisfaction and professional pride in district nurses. However, district nurses need more collegial support and training in prescribing. The additional burden that the ability to prescribe poses needs to be addressed to prevent limitations in the prescription rights of district nurses. Through an extended prescription right, district nurses can contribute to a more efficient care system that can meet future demand for healthcare services in primary care.

Bibliometric Analysis of Smart Healthcare

Advances in information technology have steered several nations' aspirations toward a health-oriented society. Conspicuously, a new concept known as smart healthcare (SHC) has been coined. The enormous interest and frequency of SHC throughout countries have resulted in a huge number of research publications in recent years. Therefore, the research will include an entire examination of the structure and development in the healthcare field, which can be readily understood using quantitative research methodologies. The current study offers a two-dimensional scientometric analysis of SHC research from the viewpoint of healthcare and corresponding research domains. The current survey focuses on extensive bibliographic records from the Web of Science from 2010 to 2019. A total of 81 403 records have been retrieved and 33 903 from the period 2010 to 2019 have been screened. The subthemes analysis depicts that a large number of publications are from primary care healthcare services (4409) while Hepatitis A has the lowest number of publications in communicable diseases (29). The survey findings also indicate that in several subthemes, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BMJ Open</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Plos One</i> journals have a major impact. The study reveals that most of the top institutions correspond to the USA (20), followed by England (8), and Greece (4). Moreover, less effort has been placed into the subtheme of systems related to veterinary and hepatitis-A, which address the scope of research in such categories. In the overall research on the expansion of publishing, it was observed that not a single subtheme of healthcare exhibited a general negative tendency, which is indicative of the growing trend of ICT proliferation in the healthcare industry.

Assessing the cognitive status of older adults attending primary healthcare centers in Saudi Arabia using the Mini-Mental State Examination.

Objectives:To assess the cognitive status of older adults in Saudi Arabia.Methods:This was a cross-sectional, multistage, stratified study of older individuals (≥60 years of age) attending primary healthcare centres in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia between January 2015 and April 2017. We collected data using a structured questionnaire, which incorporated questions regarding demographic and anthropometric variables, the Arabic version of Mini-Mental State Examination, the Mini-Nutritional Assessment tool, and the Modified Katz Index of Independence in activities of daily living.Results:Of the 1299 participants, 914 (70.4%) were male, with a mean age of 66.2 ± 5.9 years. Approximately 79.1% of the participants had intact cognitive function, 17.1 had mild cognitive impairment, and 3.8% had severe cognitive impairment. Impaired cognitive function was associated with increased age, female gender, low education, unmarried status, and unemployed (p<0.001). Reduced cognitive impairment was significantly associated with functional impairment and malnutrition (p<0.001).Conclusion:Cognitive impairment affected around 21% of the participants. The reduced cognitive function was associated with increased age, female gender, low education level, unmarried, low income, dependency on others, functional impairment, and malnutrition. Such information could motivate health-policy makers to introduce appropriate measures to improve older adults’ existing healthcare services in primary care, including cognitive function assessment.

Significance of Primary Care Healthcare Services in the Early Detection of Cancer

Holistic view and protective medicine are a must in the discipline family practise. Cancer is one of the diseases having the possibility of being detected early in the preventive medicine in routine practises, especially in middle and advanced age group. The most important mission is the primary healthcare services, which is the first contact point, in the early detection of disease groups, especially of cancers. In our article, we aimed to determine the significance of primary care healthcare services in the early detection of cancer and to raise awareness.

Healthcare utilization and costs following newly diagnosed type-2 diabetes in Sweden: A follow-up of 38,956 patients in a clinical practice setting

AimsTo describe healthcare resource use patterns and estimate healthcare costs of newly diagnosed Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients in Sweden. MethodsPatients with a newly diagnosed T2DM between 1999 and 2009 were identified from 84 Swedish primary care centres. Healthcare resource use data, excluding pharmaceuticals, were extracted from electronic patient records and a national patient register, and reported as per patient mean number of primary care contacts, laboratory tests and hospitalizations. Per patient mean healthcare costs are reported as annual and cumulative costs. ResultsDuring a median (maximum) of 4.6 (9.0) years follow-up; 38,956 patients (183,513 patient years) on average made 81 primary care contacts, was hospitalized 2.14 times, and took 31 laboratory tests. Mean per patient annual healthcare costs were €4128 (95% CI, 4054–4199) the first year after diagnosis, €2708 (95% CI, 2641–2776) the second year, and €3030 (95% CI, 2854–3204) in year 9 (2012 values). Mean per patient cumulative healthcare costs were €26,503 (95% CI, 26,025–26,970) at 9 years of follow-up. Hospitalizations accounted for the majority of healthcare costs. ConclusionsAlthough newly diagnosed T2DM patients require a substantial amount of healthcare services in primary care, hospitalizations account for the majority of healthcare costs.