21 May 2013

Medical practitioners have been urged to cease to see a patient as just someone with a disease, but as a whole person whose ailment affects his or her body, faculties, family and community.

Giving a keynote address at the first Botswana National Family Medicine conference, the Assistant Minister of Health, Mr Gaotlhaetse Matlhabaphiri said patients were individuals with peculiar needs which were moulded by their experiences.

 “As we train family medicine specialists for our country, let us take note of these important values and principles of primary health care. I urge the School of Medicine and my ministry to engage meaningfully to make this ideal a reality.

The training of postgraduate doctors is not a small task. It demands that our health system be transformed into a teaching health system,” he said. This, he said, also implied that everyone involved in the health system should understand the role they play.

“We all have to adopt evidence based care delivered professionally to the patient’s satisfaction. We have to deliver this care with the resources we have, such that our patients get the best care possible.

We might be operating under scarce resources in our facilities, but this should not be an excuse for sub-standard care,” he added. Like Cuba, Mr Matlhabaphiri said, Botswana could have better health indicators than some well-resourced countries by optimising the use of what it had.

He said patient care should improve in a teaching health system because “as members of such a system, you are constantly trying to improve patient care while being mindful of patients’ rights.”

Presenting on the role of family medicine within the district health system, the head of department at the University of Limpopo’s Family Medicine and Primary Health Care Department, Professor Gboyega Ogunbanjo explained that family medicine was a specialty devoted to comprehensive health care for people of all ages and the specialist in this practice was called a family physician.

This medical specialty, Prof. Ogunbanjo said, was based on the knowledge of the patient in the context of the family and the community with emphasis on disease prevention and health promotion. The aim of family medicine, he said, was to provide personal, comprehensive and continuity care of the individual in the context of the family and the community.

Since 2009, he said Botswana has been in the right track of establishing family medicine to assist with the realisation of the Vision 2016 pillar of a healthy and secure nation.

Prof. Ogunbanjo noted that family medicine training was taking place at two training sites in Botswana namely; Mahalapye and Maun. He therefore advised that this training be extended to other districts.

“Family medicine must happen in districts, so that family physician becomes aware of the needs of the community. A family physician is a clinical leader who is supposed to be competent and responsible for clinical governance,” he added.

He also said the efforts and commitment among trainers and trainees of family medicine in Botswana was commendable.

The two-day conference themed: Family medicine in Botswana: training and career paths, was meant for medical practitioners to engage each other in conceptualising the training and kind of family medicine specialist that they hoped to produce in Botswana. ENDS