26/01/2025
Challenges of our primary healthcare … and solutions.
It is a well known fact that primary healthcare in Malta at the moment, like in many other countries, is experiencing some difficulties. I’m sure several of you have been finding it difficult to find a doctor when you get sick. Initially this happened on Sundays but now it is also happening during the week. Finding doctors who can do home visits is even more difficult. Waiting times at health centres, emergency departments and at your own doctors have continued to increase.
Why is this happening? The population is growing, people are becoming older and thus there are more medical problems to deal with, people are becoming more sick and taking longer to recover, antibiotics seem to be working less efficiently and to make it worse, we have less doctors and nurses available. Several professionals are changing their job or leaving the country, leaving the remaining ones to deal with increasing difficulties. This would have a negative holistic impact on these professionals and thus they would be less able to offer the same holistic care to their patients.
One must also consider the bigger picture where people (patients and healthcare providers) are living in a country that is facing multiple difficulties with the educational and justice systems, the environment and an ever increasing conservative culture of individualism and lack of emotional intelligence. This makes it even more difficult for primary healthcare professionals to provide biopsychosociospiritual care to their patients. Unfortunately, in my opinion this is the most needed care in Malta at the moment as our community is becoming physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually sick.
How should primary healthcare function? Doctors need to spend on average between 10 and 15 minutes with their patient in order to make the proper holistic assessment and form together a holistic management plan. This requires follow-ups and assistance from a multi-disciplinary team. Most medical problems which are presented to family doctors do not require just medicines. People nowadays need more psychological, social and spiritual assistance. Providing such care requires time, mental energy and physical resources. Moreover, doctors need to remain in continuous self holistic and clinical development in order to keep meeting the needs of their patients. How can all this be met when doctors have to work a minimum of ten hours a day and are bombarded with requests by their patients that cannot be met. Obviously, one can understand how tiring, frustrating and demotivational this is upon the doctor and how this can impact his/her family members.
Is there a way out of this? There are numerous solutions to this problem. I recommend the relevant authorities to start analysing the holistic health of our nation, identifying our strengths and weaknesses and form a long term plan that focuses on creating a holistically healthier community. Short and mid-term solutions require all primary healthcare stakeholders to share the burden of our primary healthcare. These stakeholders include doctors, nurses, clinical assistants, clinical receptionists, pharmacists and the patients (and their family members) as well. Shouldn’t we start introducing the roles of nurse practitioners in Malta? How about training clinical assistants and clinical receptionists for our clinics? How can patients contribute to their own health?
Patients should obviously look better after their own holistic health and push for the necessary changes in our living and working environments. Cancelling appointments if you cannot attend in order to free space for others, notifying the booking system if you need help for more than one individual or with more than one problem and using online bookings are small things that would have a big impact if respected.
PrimaMed shall thus be adopting numerous measures in the coming weeks to help out with this. One such measure is to help our patients to self-medicate and be aware when they can look after their own health and when they need to seek assistance from their doctor or family nurse. Please find below links for an e-book that can help you to know when you need to visit your doctor.
https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1jQCgA78FdZfLIIbqXS4Ic-qYFL0wzUZ3%2Fview&data=05%7C02%7Cjessica-florence.darmanin%40gov.mt%7C76d9b4104a8845e8fdaa08dd3ab36fd0%7C34cdd9f55db849bcacba01f65cca680d%7C0%7C0%7C638731264523668679%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=JrD9XULbfGheIqnueuZBEMQI5XVqndFGSWQl6DN3%2FkU%3D&reserved=0
Moreover, below you can find a website which can help you to check your symptoms and guide you on how to self-manage and when to seek help.
https://www.nhsinform.scot/
More is coming soon! Please help us to help you 🙂
NHS inform is Scotland's national health information service helping the people in Scotland to make informed decisions about their own health and the health of the people they care for
