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How well do public sector primary care providers function as medical generalists in Cape Town: a descriptive survey

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Primary Care, July 2018
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  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (92nd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (98th percentile)

Mentioned by

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4 news outlets
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7 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

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8 Dimensions

Readers on

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51 Mendeley
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Title
How well do public sector primary care providers function as medical generalists in Cape Town: a descriptive survey
Published in
BMC Primary Care, July 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12875-018-0802-x
Pubmed ID
Authors

Renaldo Christoffels, Bob Mash

Abstract

Effective primary health care requires a workforce of competent medical generalists. In South Africa nurses are the main primary care providers, supported by doctors. Medical generalists should practice person-centred care for patients of all ages, with a wide variety of undifferentiated conditions and should support continuity and co-ordination of care. The aim of this study was to assess the ability of primary care providers to function as medical generalists in the Tygerberg sub-district of the Cape Town Metropole. A randomly selected adult consultation was audio-recorded from each primary care provider in the sub-district. A validated local assessment tool based on the Calgary-Cambridge guide was used to score 16 skills from each consultation. Consultations were also coded for reasons for encounter, diagnoses and complexity. The coders inter- and intra-rater reliability was evaluated. Analysis described the consultation skills and compared doctors with nurses. 45 practitioners participated (response rate 85%) with 20 nurses and 25 doctors. Nurses were older and more experienced than the doctors. Doctors saw more complicated patients. Good inter- and intra-rater reliability was shown for the coder with an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.84 (95% CI 0.045-0.996) and 0.99 (95% CI 0.984-0.998) respectively. The overall median consultation score was 25.0% (IQR 18.8-34.4). The median consultation score for nurses was 21.6% (95% CL 16.7-28.1) and for doctors was 26.7% (95% CL 23.3-34.4) (p = 0.17). There was no difference in score with the complexity of the consultation. Ten of the 16 skills were not performed in more than half of the consultations. Six of the 16 skills were partly or fully performed in more than half of the consultations and these included the more biomedical skills. Practitioners did not demonstrate a person-centred approach to the consultation and lacked many of the skills required of a medical generalist. Doctors and nurses were not significantly different. Improving medical generalism may require attention to how access to care is organised as well as to training programmes.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 7 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 51 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 51 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 9 18%
Student > Bachelor 6 12%
Student > Ph. D. Student 5 10%
Other 3 6%
Lecturer > Senior Lecturer 3 6%
Other 6 12%
Unknown 19 37%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 13 25%
Social Sciences 6 12%
Nursing and Health Professions 6 12%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 1 2%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 1 2%
Other 5 10%
Unknown 19 37%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 33. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 13 November 2022.
All research outputs
#1,190,672
of 25,385,509 outputs
Outputs from BMC Primary Care
#83
of 2,359 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#25,017
of 340,393 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Primary Care
#1
of 68 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,385,509 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,359 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.7. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 340,393 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 68 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.