Involvement of family and community doctors and nurses in primary health care activities in Uruguay

Abstract

Objective: the study aims to define how the different activities in primary health care should be distributed between nurse clinicians and family and community physicians as members of the same health team.
Method: exploratory study by consulting experts from the Academia.
Results: nine expert community nurses from the Community Nursing program of the School of Nursing and eleven experts in Family and Community Medicine from the School of Medicine, University of the Republic, participated in the study. Similarities and differences between the groups of experts were identified in terms of ways of distributing the different activities in primary health care between the two professions.
Conclusions: for the first time in the country, the distribution of services provided by two health disciplines was jointly explored in the same study.
A high degree of agreement was found in the activities to be developed by primary health teams. Experts identified a great number of activities that may or must be evenly performed by both professions and a small number that is the exclusive responsibility of one profession or it should preferably be performed by one of them.
The distribution of functions and activities between these two professions by adding, complementing or substituting one another would contribute to the definition of supply models the improve the quality and costs of health care services.