Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT: Background
Family medicine is a branch of medicine that manages common and long-term illnesses in children and adults. Family physicians in particular play a major role and their scope of practice is expected to impact patient and population. However, little is known about its impact on physicians. We aimed to assess the effects of scope of practice on family physician outcomes.Methods
We performed a systematic review that we reported using PRISMA guidelines. For the inclusion criteria, any study exploring an association between the scope of practice and physician outcomes was considered. Three bibliographic databases Medline, Embase, and ERIC were consulted through OVID interface from their respective inceptions to November, 2020. Two reviewers independently selected studies, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of studies using appropriate tools. We conducted data synthesis using a narrative form. GRADE was used for evaluating quality of cumulative evidence.Results
In total, we included 12 studies with 38,732 participants from 6927 citations identified. Eleven of them were cross-sectional, and one was a cohort study with acceptable methodological quality. We found that: 1) family physicians with diverse clinical and nonclinical activities significantly improve their job satisfaction (p<0.05); 2) family physicians with a variety of clinical practices significantly improve their competences and health status (p<0.05); 3) family physicians who perform clinical procedures (mainly extended to gynecological procedures) significantly improve their psychosocial outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction) (p<0.05); and 4) some associations are not statistically significant (e.g., relation between variety of practice settings and outcomes). We observed that the evidence available has a very low level.Conclusions
Our findings suggest that the scope of practice may be favorably associated with some family physician outcomes but with a very low level of evidence available. Based on these findings, healthcare system managers could monitor the scope of practice among family physicians and encourage future research in this field.Systematic review registration
Our protocol was registered under the number CRD42019121990 in PROSPERO.
SUBMITTER: Zomahoun HTV
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7796628 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
BMC family practice 20210108 1
<h4>Background</h4>Family medicine is a branch of medicine that manages common and long-term illnesses in children and adults. Family physicians in particular play a major role and their scope of practice is expected to impact patient and population. However, little is known about its impact on physicians. We aimed to assess the effects of scope of practice on family physician outcomes.<h4>Methods</h4>We performed a systematic review that we reported using PRISMA guidelines. For the inclusion cr ...[more]