Although primary care has been recognized as an essential element of the healthcare system, the primary healthcare of Korea has not been highly valued. Listening to the voices of physicians who are engaged in primary care should be the first step for improving the level of primary care in Korea. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of general internists to investigate their perspectives regarding primary care, and which included the evaluation of current primary care, perception of the five, key attributes of primary care, and their opinions regarding the management system of chronic diseases. A total of 466 general internists' responses were used in this analysis. The results showed that primary care is considered to have an important role, according to general internists, although their evaluation of the overall status of primary care in Korea indicated that it is poor. The respondents also indicated that the functions of coordination and comprehensiveness in primary care, which can be integral for treating patients with chronic diseases, are most vulnerable. Given the high level of agreement regarding the need for a new medical management system for chronic diseases, based on physicians' autonomy and provided by clinics, establishing a policy encouraging the participation of general internists should be emphasized.
Adult ; Aged ; Attitude of Health Personnel ; Chronic Disease ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Physicians/*psychology/trends ; Practice Patterns, Physicians'/*trends ; Primary Health Care/*trends ; Republic of Korea ; Surveys and Questionnaires

At present, Chinese medical field faces with an important problem of how to correctly handle the relationship between medical and scientific research. Academician Li Lianda advocates doctors doing scientific research under the premise of putting the medical work first. He points out that there are many problems in the process of doctors doing scientific research at present such as paying more attention to scientific research than medical care, excessively promoting building scientific research hospital, only paying attention to training scientific talents, research direction be flashy without substance, the medical evaluation system should be improved and so on. Medical, scientific research and teaching are inseparable because improving medical standards depends on scientific research and personnel training. But not all doctors need to take into account of medical treatment, scientific research and teaching in the same degree while not all hospitals need to turn into three-in-one hospital, scientific research hospital or teaching hospital. It must be treated differently according to the actual situation.
Altitude ; Biomedical Research ; education ; manpower ; trends ; Humans ; Physicians ; psychology ; statistics & numerical data