Abstract Body

Background and purpose: Portugal has faced one of the strongest waves of COVID-19, since the beginning of the pandemic. Nevertheless, most COVID-19 patients have been developing a mild illness manageable at the primary care level. Our goal is to report the challenges we faced in our practice.

Methods: On April 2020, the Portuguese Directorate-General for Health and Shared Services of the Ministry of Health developed a tool to support telehealth called Trace Covid-19, aimed at accompanying and monitoring COVID-19 patients who are in self-care and isolation at home. Since then, Portuguese family doctors have been responsible not only for clinical monitoring, but also for medical information, such as principles of exposure and infection, infectious period, and isolation measures.

Results: As the pandemic evolves and we face new waves of infection, the working model has become more open and collaborative, either because of the constant need to make adaptations or because of the need to create new decision protocols and flowcharts. Aiming to avoid major healthcare neediness, we had to reinvent ourselves to maintain our important role in the prevention and management of chronic diseases and continue to provide care for “non-COVID” patients. One of the strategies was to favor teleconsultation and multidisciplinary strategies between doctors, nurses and administrative assistants.

Conclusions: Dealing with COVID-19 pandemic has been a huge challenge to the Portuguese primary healthcare system. Our effort to rapidly readapt our clinical practice by introducing new approaches and methodologies has allowed us to provide follow-up to COVID-19 cases, while maintaining surveillance of our “non-COVID” patients.