Associate Professor Dr Michelle Guppy from the New England GP Research Network collaborated in developing and delivering an online survey on preparedness, confidence and concerns of general practitioners in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. There were responses from 1,642 GPs from seven countries: Australia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The open-access report can be found here published in Frontiers in Public Health.
It was found that there were substantial differences regarding management and personal experience of GPs depending on their countries’ health care systems and experiences with recent pandemics (e.g. SARS and MERS).
The authors recommended:
“GPs should be involved in developing a coordinated strategy to deal with pandemics, which should be communicated to affected health care institutions and populations as early as possible“.
