Knowledge and attitudes towards specific problem solving of family physicians in family health centres in Edirne city centre

The aim of our study was to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of family physicians working in family health centers in the center of Edirne towards authentic problem solving skills and to increase awareness and quality of healthcare services. Our study is descriptive and cross-sectional. The study was conducted with 52 family physicians working in family health centres in the centre of Edirne. Data were collected with a questionnaire consisting of 50 questions created by the researcher by reviewing the literature. The mean age of the participants was 47.8 ± 7.3 years, the mean duration of practice was 22.8 ± 8 years, the mean duration of family medicine was 12.8 ± 5.9 years, and the mean duration of practice in the family health center was 8.9 ± 6.1 years. Among the participants, 51.9% were women and 69.2% were general practitioners. The average number of people registered with them was 3263.9 ± 490.8 and the average number of patients seen per day was 74.8 ± 17.6 patients. The mean total score of the participants on the attitude statements related to Specific Problem Solving Skills was 58.65 ± 4.8 and the mean total number of correct knowledge statements was 12.83 ± 2.66. Since there is no ready-made scale and cut-off point in the literature, in our study, it was evaluated that physicians exhibited positive attitudes towards Authentic Problem Solving Skills and their knowledge levels were moderately high. It was concluded that the values were not at the targeted level but promising. It was found that the number of patients cared daily increased as a result of increased specific problem solving skills of physicians, increased service quality and increased patient satisfaction. Following current publications related to family medicine, knowing a foreign language at a level to follow the literature, and the accuracy of information questions were found to be higher in family medicine specialists. In conclusion, in order to increase the knowledge and attitudes of family physicians towards specific problem solving, it should be aimed to increase the number of family medicine specialists trained in the discipline and to increase the quality of health service by giving importance to the qualitative development of physicians.