Abstract
BACKGROUND: The features of primary care are well described on the dimension of public health. Primary care clinicians consist of a large portion of health-care workforce. To guide clinical thinking in primary care practice, its basic clinical principles should be synthesized. METHODS: We searched literature in PubMed, MEDLINE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Med Online, using the key words of “primary care practice”, “primary care”, “primary health care”, “general practice” in combination with “principle”, “ideal”, “description”, “characteristic” and “feature” to synthesize basic clinical principles of primary care practice. RESULTS: Six basic clinical principles of primary care practice are synthesized. 1. Holistic: includes holism, whole person care, bio-psycho-social model, lateral clinical thinking, and overcoming fragmented specialization. 2. Integrative: consists of combination of orthodox and complementary medicine, coordinated care, and practicing holistic integrated medicine(HIM). 3. Continuous: deals with continuous clinician-patient relationship, seamless services, life-cycle medical services, and full medical care at any time and place. 4. Preventive: contains undifferentiated disease care, health habit counseling, screening for asymptomatic diseases, and immunization. 5. Patient-centered: comprises responsive to individual patient needs and values, people-oriented care, and practicing Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH). 6. Standardized: involves use of evidence-based medicine (EBM), following the clinical guideline, and applying clinical pathway. CONCLUSION: The six basic clinical principles of primary care practice are holistic, integrative, continuous, preventive, patient-centered and standardized care. They might be the backbone of primary care practice and be recommended to be used to construct the disciplinary knowledge of clinical primary care practice. KEY WORDS: Primary care practice, primary care, primary health care, general practice.
Key words, literature search and the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care
