Assessment of the workload of general practitioners in outpatient clinics in Almaty

Aim: The purpose of this study is to comprehensively assess the workload of general practitioners using the time study and the WISN method..

Materials and Methods: Time studies are used to assess the objective workload of physicians, by measuring the duration of physicians' activities, and the WISN method, which is based on the workload of a health care professional and determines how many health care professionals of a certain type are needed to cope with the workload of a given health care facility.

Results: The results show that general practitioners spend short period of time for one patient visits, which may be conditioned by high patient attendance. In addition, general practitioners perform unusual functional duties. When calculated based on the Republican standard, the needs assessment by the WISN method showed that there is a shortage of general practitioners in outpatient clinics.

Conclusions: The needs assessment for the first and second scenarios shows that general practitioners cope with the workload of receiving patients, so the WISN assessment shows that there is a surplus of general practitioners.