Reflections of the Covid-19 pandemic on primary healthcare services and family physicians

Primary health care services are institutions that play an active role in providing protective, preventive and rehabilitative health services. Physicians working in primary health care are health professionals who first respond to the health needs of the society and are in constant communication with the society. The Covid-19 virus, which emerged at the end of 2019 and affected the whole world, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The Covid-19 virus appears to have effects on the primary healthcare organization's delivery process and, he family medicine system, and is among the issues that should be taken into consideration for healthcare managers. Within the scope of the research, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on primary healthcare services and family physicians was investigation. In this context, the aim of the research is to examine deeply how and to what extent primary health care services and family physicians are affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this research, using the case study design, which is one of the qualitative research methods, how the participants were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic was examined deeply through interviews. Research group; ıt consists of 21 physicians working in primary health care services living in Antalya city center, participants were reached through criterion and snowball methods, which are among the purposeful sampling methods. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed with thematic analysis, the data were coded and the findings were obtained by thematizing the codes. As a result of the research, the physiological, psychological and economic reflections of the Covid-19 pandemic on physicians were observed. Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on the working systems of physicians, physician-patient relations, professional and private lives of factors such as inadequacy of personnel and personal protective equipment, working conditions, increase in workload, disruptions in access to health services, lack of social life and communication.