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Table 2 Competencies and contexts of general practitioners in urban/non-urban areas and common competencies

From: Competencies required for general practitioners/family physicians in urban areas versus non-urban areas: a preliminary study

Category

Concepts

Competency of general practitioners in urban areas

• Demonstration of comprehensive care ability depending on conditions

• Integration of fragmented care in urban areas

• Active involvement in patients who received fragmented care

• Comprehensive care for minority group, a characteristic of each region of urban areas

• Understanding various occupations/lifestyles in urban areas

• Formation of agreements with patients with various values in urban areas

• Judgment for appropriate hospital introduction according to the patient situation

• Efforts for regional collaboration on emergency medicine issues in urban areas

• Collaboration with various medical care and welfare personnel

• Communication with nonresident family members

Context

of general practitioners

in urban areas

• Relatively narrow scope of biomedical care

• Patients’ selective care-receiving behavior in urban areas

• Segmented healthcare services in urban areas

• Unclear responsibility regarding care

• Confusion about what being a general practitioner in urban areas means

• Diversity of socioeconomic regional characteristics in an urban area

• Various occupations/lifestyles in urban areas

• Relatively high healthcare needs in urban areas

• Sense of difficulties in understanding different medical resources

• Quality differences in medical care among physicians/hospitals in urban areas

• Emergency medicine issues in urban areas

• Difficulties in comprehensive local community care

• Diversity of local medical care and welfare professionals

• Lack of face-to-face relationships in medical care and welfare collaboration in urban areas

• Lack of mutual help function around patients in urban areas

• Long physical/psychological distance between workplaces and homes

• Lack of visibility of families and affiliated communities

Competency

of general practitioners

in non-urban areas

• Broad biomedical care scope

• Responsibility of doctors as limited medical resources

• Judgment to make effective use of limited medical resources

• Care collaborating with local communities

• Ability to build appropriate human relationships with residents

Context

of general practitioners

in non-urban areas

• Clarity of responsibility of care

• Ease of maintaining interpersonal continuity

• Ease of acquiring identity as a family physician in non-urban areas

• Regional differences in medical care-receiving behaviors in non-urban areas

• Limited medical resources

• A sense of understanding medical care skills of surrounding medical institutions and individual physicians

• Face-to-face relationships in healthcare collaboration

• Ease of grasping local communities

• Face-to-face relationships in medical care and welfare cooperation

• Physical/psychological proximity between workplaces and homes

• High visibility of patient/family background

Common competency of general practitioners in urban/non-urban areas

• Biomedical care ability

• Comprehensiveness of medical care according to place and situation of medicine

• Medical care for patients with multiple diseases

• Healthcare workers as support roles in each patient’s life

• Necessity of decision-making based on patient background

• Connection role in community healthcare

• Division of labor/collaboration with subspecialists in hospitals

• Creation of social resource networks for community care

• Familiar advisors