What role does the GP play for emergency department utilizers? A qualitative exploration of respiratory patients' perspectives in Berlin, Germany
Oslislo, Sarah, Heintze, Christoph, Möckel, Martin, Schenk, Liane, and Holzinger, Felix (2020) What role does the GP play for emergency department utilizers? A qualitative exploration of respiratory patients' perspectives in Berlin, Germany. BMC Family Practice, 21. 154.
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Abstract
Background: While motives for emergency department (ED) self-referrals have been investigated in a number of studies, the relevance of general practitioner (GP) care for these patients has not been comprehensively evaluated. Respiratory symptoms constitute an important utilization trigger in both EDs and in primary care. In this qualitative study, we aimed to explore the role of GP care for patients visiting EDs as outpatients for respiratory complaints and the relevance of the relationship between patient and GP in the decision making process leading up to an ED visit.
Methods: Qualitative descriptive study. Semi-structured, face-To-face interviews with a sample of 17 respiratory ED patients in Berlin, Germany. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative content analysis was performed. The study was embedded into the EMACROSS (Emergency and Acute Care for Respiratory Diseases beyond Sectoral Separation) cohort of ED patients with respiratory symptoms, which is part of EMANet (Emergency and Acute Medicine Network for Health Care Research).
Results: Three patterns of GP utilization could be differentiated: long-Term regular consulters, sporadic consulters and patients without GP. In sporadic consulters and patients without GP, an ambivalent or even aversive view of GP care was prevalent, with lack of confidence in GPs' competence and a deficit in trust as seemingly relevant influencing factors. Regardless of utilization or relationship type, patients frequently made contact with a GP before visiting an ED.
Conclusions: With regard to respiratory symptoms, our qualitative data suggest a hypothesis of limited relevance of patients' primary care utilization pattern and GP-patient relationship for ED consultation decisions.
| Item ID: | 66774 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1471-2296 |
| Keywords: | Emergency medicine, General practitioner, Physician-patient relationship, Primary health care, Qualitative research |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s). 2020. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate ifchanges were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commonslicence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commonslicence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtainpermission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to thedata made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
| Funders: | Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) |
| Projects and Grants: | BMBF grant number 01GY1604 |
| Date Deposited: | 05 May 2021 00:11 |
| FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3202 Clinical sciences > 320207 Emergency medicine @ 50% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420304 General practice @ 50% |
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