Patients’ perceptions and experiences of family medicine practice as a driver for public healthcare service delivery and provision”

Background: [1] Patients’ expectations and their perceptions of the integration and delivery of healthcare known as service quality differ (Bright et al., 2021).  [2,3,4] Efforts have concentrated on finding influences on users' views impacted by demographic traits, health problems, and cultural variables because it is difficult to measure expectations directly (Key et al., 2021; Elliott et al., 2020; Waweru et al., 2019). It is essential to comprehend the viewpoints and experiences of patients to evaluate the effectiveness of family medicine, pinpoint areas in need of development, and direct policy and training. This scoping review looks at research on Nigerian patients' perceptions of family medicine and its function in providing public healthcare to develop ways to increase its value to the healthcare system.

Methodology: After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 680 articles were retrieved, of which 15 were included in the final scoping review. Any study examining patients' opinions and experiences of family medicine practice as a determinant of public healthcare service provision and delivery in Nigeria would satisfy the inclusion requirements. To broaden the scope of the review, patients in Nigeria, whether male or female, will be the population considered in the studies that will be included. To expand the scope of the evaluation, papers that are included will consider the population of Nigerian patients, regardless of gender.  Articles published in the 20 years between 2004 and 2024 will be included; those published before will be disregarded.  Through database searches, the articles were located from PUBMED, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, and ProQuest.

Results: The primary findings of the studied literature are presented under the main themes of perception and experience, along with the codes and sub-themes that go along with them. These include continuity of care, comprehensive care, first point of contact, trust in competence, physical access, affordability, accessibility of services, waiting time and flow, and quality of communication.

Conclusion: Patients' interactions with public health systems are significantly influenced by their impressions and experiences of FM practice. The relational, cost-effective, easily accessible, and comprehensive aspects of FM services are key to improving patients’ health outcomes, and these results support the notion that family medicine is crucial to advancing equitable, patient-centered public health care in Nigeria.