General practice: professional preparation for a pandemic

Abstract

General practice will play a key role in both prevention and management of an influenza pandemic. Australian pandemic plans acknowledge a role for general practice, but there are few published data addressing the issues that general practitioners and their practices will face in dealing with such a crisis. The outcome will revolve around preparation in three key areas: ➢Definition of the role of general practice within a broad primary care pandemic response, and adequate preparation within general practices so they can play that role well. Planning exercises and forums must include GPs, and rehearsals must include practical experience for general practices and their staff. Local Divisions of General Practice and GP practices can advocate for this, can define their role, and can prepare by using pandemic preparedness checklists. ➢Definition and enactment of communication strategies to facilitate transfer of useful clinical and administrative data from practices and rapid dissemination of information into the community via general practice. ➢Resource provision, which should be centrally funded but locally distributed, with personal protective equipment, vaccines and antivirals readily available for distribution. Resources must include support for human resource management to ensure appropriate health care professionals reach areas of workforce demand. Administrative, clinical and financial resources must be available to train GPs and practices in pandemic awareness and response.

General Practice and Pandemic Influenza: A Framework for Planning and Comparison of Plans in Five Countries

“…The first, prevention and treatment of influenza, includes care for the surge in patients with acute respiratory illness, and for people at high risk of exposure to, or complications from, influenza. These aspects are discussed extensively in the literature [20][21][22][23]. Most people with influenza can be managed in the community, protecting hospitals by delaying or avoiding admission and facilitating early discharge.…”

Insufficient preparedness of primary care practices for pandemic influenza and the effect of a preparedness plan in Japan: a prefecture-wide cross-sectional study

“…Pandemic preparedness plans have mainly emphasized hospital preparedness. Although there have been some attempts to include primary care, implementation of primary care preparedness and response has not been adequately addressed [16,17]. There have been few reports on the preparedness of individual PCPs to respond to emerging respiratory infectious diseases, and on the effect of planning on individual preparedness.…”

Diagnosis and Antiviral Intervention Strategies for Mitigating an Influenza Epidemic

“…In Australia, the implementation of the “Contain” strategy lasted for several weeks in some Australian states, prior to switching to a more proportionate “Protect” phase given the generally mild nature of observed disease. In the planning phase, sufficient stockpiling and distribution of resources, along with rapid and clear two-way communications were identified as critical determinants of success both within Australia [22], [23] and internationally [19], [20]. Further issues identified in the media and medical press by critics of the pandemic response included excessive administrative burden on general practices (GPs), delays in receiving test results, centralised bottlenecks, a lack of clear communication, updates to the AHMPPI that some considered “not entirely workable” and that were applied inconsistently, inadequately detailed planning and other real-world complexities [21], [24]–[26].…”