Preventive Medicine & Public Health

Biography

Osama Abdelaziz Fakher is from Department of Community Medicine and Industrial Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Egypt. 

Abstract

Background: In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of older persons all over the world. The number of people aged 60 years and over is expected to increase to 2 billion by the year 2050.One of the greatest challenges in geriatrics is the provision of optimal comprehensive geriatric care for older adults. Family physicians can improve the early identification of specific problems that are common in the elderly and also shift their focus from disease specific intervention to preventive care.

Objectives: To improve the health of geriatrics through identifying health problems among the studied geriatric population in Sharkia governorate and determining the level of the family physicians' knowledge and practice of comprehensive geriatric care in Sharkia governorate.

Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted, it was conducted in 9 accredited family health centers in Sharkia governorate for one year. The family health centers were selected by stratified random sampling technique from health centers of Sharkia governorate. The sample included 630 elderly person and 52 family physicians.

Results: The results of this study declared that the most prevalent self-reported morbidities were, diabetes mellitus (36.7%), hypertension (33.5%) and respiratory disease (20.2%).The results also showed  that (76.9%) of the studied family physicians have adequate knowledge about physical problems of the elderly population and(25%) of the studied family physicians have adequate performance in taking personal history, abdominal examination and  counseling of the elderly population.

Conclusion: The more prevalent self-reported morbidities among the studied geriatric population were, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and respiratory diseases. Most of family physicians had inadequate level of performance as regard physicians performance during dealing with geriatric patients.

Recommendations: The study highlighted the need to promote geriatric health care services, regular health checkup and social support by people. Continuous training of family physicians specially in comprehensive geriatric care for providing high quality of care for elderly population.