Nine years of publications on strengths and weaknesses of Family Physician Program in rural area of Iran: A systematic review

Introduction: One of the most important duties of a family physician is to provide primary health care. This is completely considered in the Family Physician Program for a target population. The aim of this study was to systematically review the Family Physician and Referral System strength and weakness in rural area of Iran. Methods: In this systematic review, Scientific Information Database (SID), Science Direct, and PubMed databases were searched and Google search engine was employed using key words such as family medicine, family physician, and referral system for the period of January 2005 to June 2013, both in English and Persian. For identifying duplicated references, Endnote Software was used and for summarizing results of fully assessed articles extraction table was employed. Results: Strengths and weaknesses of Family Physician Program and referral system in rural areas of Iran were extracted from 28 studies. In total, 115 weaknesses (3.96 per study) and 103 strengths (3.55 per study) were obtained. Content analysis was used and 218 items were summarized into 29 items. Strengths of Family Physician Program were: access of villagers to health services, filling health document for clients, improving services for pregnant mothers, and family planning; while its obvious weaknesses included repeated unnecessary referral of clients as well as lack of providing job stability. Conclusion: Results of studies conducted in Iran showed that Family Physician and Referral System in rural area of Iran could not be successful enough and has many shortcomings. Therefore, a growing body of effective changes must be made for a better performance and to obtain better outcomes.