Abstract Body

Background

Family medicine is new in the region of Kurdistan, northern Iraq. Since 6 years Dutch-Kurdish projects have been developed to elevate the primary health care to family medicine care level.

Aim To study the effects of family medicine care on the satisfaction of patients in the new Dutch-Kurdish family medicine centre Avro City, Duhok.

Patients and methods A repetitive cross-sectional study design was conducted during a 2 week

period in 2017 and 2020. Included were patients willing to cooperate who presented at the centre. Information was obtained by a semi-quantitative questionnaire.

Results A total of 312 patients were included in 2017 and 312 in 2020. 2017/2020 Demographics 68%/52% female patients, median age of 20-30/20-30 years. Median visit frequency 6/6 times in the past 12 months. Communication skills of the family doctors for: respect, listening, patience, explanation of care: good to excellent/good to excellent of a score of 4 (Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor). Family medicine aspects: enough consultation time, trust in treatment, preventive care, interest and care in personal situation and involvement of decision making were also good/excellent. The centre as a whole was rated good and the treatment experiences very good. Patients rated the centre very good/good to excellent in comparison to earlier experiences with primary health care and 99/99% would recommend the centre to other people.

Conclusions and Recommendations Two successive patient experience analysis with a new family medicine clinic, AvroCity, demonstrate sustained positive results. The important “ambassador” function in middle eastern countries is effective with almost 100% of the patients recommending the centre above standard primary health care.