Most doctors just do not have time to offer all of the preventative primary care treatments that are currently recommended. This is especially true in low-resource and rural areas, where it might be difficult to provide high-quality care due to a lack of resources. Clinicians’ perspectives on the services they require most improvement in were sought in this study. To determine where clinicians see the most room for development, the authors surveyed primary care physicians between September 12 and 12, 2021, focusing on rural clinics. The survey compared and contrasted the needs for improvement for primary prevention (behavior change counseling) and cancer screening among doctors in rural and non-rural practices and between the different screening methods. Responses came from 326 doctors in rural areas, spanning 49 states and hailing from 4 practice-based research networks. Nutrition and dietary assessment and counseling needs were ranked highest by respondents, followed by physical activity needs, and there were essentially no variations between rural and nonrural areas. Other tests, such as blood pressure, were rated lower on the list of priorities for improvement than cancer screenings. Primary care physicians in rural and urban areas recognize a need for development, particularly in primary preventive initiatives. Developing stakeholder-informed advice and resources for primary care to carry out primary prevention should be given more priority than future research to replicate these findings with different populations and other types of preventive service activities.
Source: bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-022-01845-1
