Primary Care Doctor Role

From my perspectives, the role primary care doctor is important in the health care system. Primary care doctors acts as a “gatekeeper” in health service. As the entry point for most of the patient’s medical and health concerns, primary care doctors not only provides medications and treatments for patients regardless of their problems, they also regulate the access to specialists and more advanced yet costly procedures. According to the severity of patient’s situations and the origin of the problems, primary care doctors can decide whether referral to specialists is required. Also, primary care doctors can analyze to patients whether certain procedures or treatments are required. As many patients nowadays tend to come up with their own diagnosis

For examples, for elderly patients, primary care doctors can warn them about the importance of exercising regularly and controlling diets, so as to prevent progression of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. By altering life style, patients’ risk of suffering from chronic illnesses will be reduced, this can lower the burden of public hospitals in handling with chronic illnesses. Primary care doctors have the ability to analyze and decide whether the patients require a referral to specialists. Instead of referring the patients that are hard to handle immediately, primary care doctors should treat the patients with their utmost effort if they have the ability to treat the patients. Some doctors are not fulfilling their own roles nowadays, they are not treating patients if they found the conditions are complicated and take long time of following up, they will rather referring to specialists than treating it themselves, this will increase the burden on the specialists service. Therefore, the role of primary doctors should be gatekeeping instead of adding burden to other health service system Apart from the above-mentioned, primary care doctors can direct patients to the best place for their treatment. If primary care doctors decide patients should be referred to specialists, they should also take into account

Instead we should be advocating patients to practice healthy lifestyle and aware of any potential health risks in daily life. Prevention of diseases is of most importance, preventing infections by practicing basic hygiene can lower the burden to the entire health care system and prevent unnecessary expense of patients. Practicing healthy lifestyle such as exercising at least 30 minutes everyday and controlling diets can help to lower the risk of having chronic illnesses in the late years, which can ease a large portion of public hospitals. Other than that, doctors should also aware of any social or mental difficulties of patients, which may be the underlying cause or hindering factors for patients to comply with treatment. If doctors observe patients have financial or social difficulties, they can advocate patients to seek help from medical social workers, this is beneficial to both patients and the whole health care