Clinical Ability of the Family Medicine Physician on Preeclampsia-eclampsia in the Family Medicine Unit no. 94 of the IMSS

Abstract

Objective: to determine the clinical aptitude of the family doctor about preeclampsia-eclampsia in the Family Medicine Unit no. 94 of the Mexican Social Security Institute (imss). Methods: observational, cross-sectional, and descriptive to 47 physicians (34 family physicians and 13 general practitioners) assigned to the Family Medicine Unit no. 94 from November to December 2015; a validated instrument for the evaluation of the clinical ability of preeclampsia-eclampsia in primary care was used. This consisted of 109 false and true statements, of which 54 were true and 55 false. The ability was catalogued according to the numbers of correct answers in very high (93-109), high (75-92), average (57-74), low (39-56), very low (21-38) and to the random (0-20). Through descriptive statistics the clinical ability of the family physicians were compared with the general practitioners. Results: family physicians (72.3% of the participants) obtained 9% in random category, 26% very low and 53% low; general practitioners (27.7%) presented an ability of 31% in random, 23% very low and 31% low. Conclusions: clinical ability of doctors on preeclampsia-eclampsia at the Family Medicine Unit no. 94 is unacceptable, as the low, very low and random were the higher categories; general practitioners obtained a lower percentage in the scores of these categories (85%), in comparison with the specialists (88%). Therefore, family physicians do not have better clinical ability to manage pre-eclampsia than general practitioners.