Lawson Henry J O, Nortey David N N
Department of Community Health, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra, Ghana.
Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 May 31;8:667144. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.667144. eCollection 2021.
Family Medicine is a growing specialty in the medical world. While it is expected that the specialty should have its own unique and established core values and tasks, the breath of the practice in several countries of the world has made this a daunting task. Core values and Tasks have far reaching effects on professions. They guide development of curricula, methods of instruction, standards of performance and even the culture of the profession. We aimed to explore the core value system of Family Physicians and General Practitioners practicing in Africa. Using the Delphi technique, a purposive selection of African Family Medicine practitioners in academia, public service, private practice and clinical training across Central, East, North, South and West Africa was conducted. Participants were asked to select five core values from an alphabetically collated global list of 29 core values in an online survey. The five most selected core values were collated and sent out in the second round to the participants to rank in order of importance. Practitioners from nine African countries in three out of the five United Nations subregions of Africa completed the study. The first round of the study saw participation of a team of nineteen experts who selected the following five core values-Comprehensive care, Continuity of Care, Collaborative Care, Patient centered care, and Life-long learning. The core values selected were not very different from global literature. These core values should guide the development of curricula, standardization of training methods and creation of benchmarks for standards of practice for the specialty in Africa.
家庭医学在医学界是一个不断发展的专业领域。虽然人们期望该专业应有其独特且既定的核心价值观和任务，但世界上几个国家的实践范围使得这成为一项艰巨的任务。核心价值观和任务对职业有着深远的影响。它们指导课程的开发、教学方法、绩效标准乃至职业文化。我们旨在探索在非洲执业的家庭医生和全科医生的核心价值体系。运用德尔菲法，有目的地挑选了来自非洲中部、东部、北部、南部和西部在学术界、公共服务、私人执业及临床培训领域的非洲家庭医学从业者。在一项在线调查中，要求参与者从按字母顺序整理的29项全球核心价值观列表中选出五项核心价值观。整理出最常被选中的五项核心价值观，并在第二轮中发送给参与者，让他们按重要性排序。来自非洲五个联合国次区域中三个区域的九个非洲国家的从业者完成了这项研究。研究的第一轮有19位专家参与，他们选出了以下五项核心价值观——全面护理、连续护理、协作护理、以患者为中心的护理和终身学习。所选的核心价值观与全球文献中的并无太大差异。这些核心价值观应指导非洲该专业课程的开发、培训方法的标准化以及实践标准基准的制定。
