Qualitative Research on Factors Influencing the Implementation of Integrated Health Services in Community Medical Institutions from the Perspective of Practitioners

Background Physical and medical integration is essential for promoting the health of community residents and is an important guarantee for the high-quality development of community medical services, and practitioners are the foothold and focus of physical medicine integration services. However, there is currently a lack of relevant research on the impact of community medical institutions in carrying out physical medicine integration services from the perspective of practitioners. Objective To study the understanding and views of practitioners on how to carry out the integrated service of physical medicine in the community to provide ideas and references for the community to better carry out the integrated service of physical medicine. Methods In March and April 2023, 11 practitioners from 5 community health service centers in Zhuzhou city, Hunan Province, were selected as survey subjects by means of an objective sampling method. The descriptive research method was adopted to conduct "one-on-one" semistructured in-depth interviews with community practitioners. With the help of the content analysis software Nvivo 12.0, text transcription recording, analysis unit formation, content coding and theme extraction were carried out for the interview content. Finally, the interview data were logically analyzed using descriptive phenomenological analysis to capture GPs' understanding and perceptions of the influences on the development of body-health integration services in the community, and to summarize the themes of the interviews. Results The factors affecting the development of physical and medical integration services in communities can be summarized into 4 themes and 10 subthemes. There was an urgent need to optimize the service environment for the integration of physical medicine (insufficient site supply, lagging atmosphere, and insufficient publicity) , improve the ability of practitioners (insufficient cognitive ability for the integration of physical medicine and the ability to issue sports prescriptions) , lack of support in community hospitals (lack of training activities related to the integration of physical medicine, insufficient fund allocation and shortage of human resources) , and lack of patient cognition of the integration of physical and medicine (patients have poor cognition of the efficacy of body-medicine integration, and patients have poor cognition of the risk of body-medicine integration) . Conclusion There are still many shortcomings in the service ability of community practitioners. To promote better development of community integrated services, it is urgent to optimize the service environment of community integrated services, to improve practitioners' integrative cognition ability and exercise prescription ability, to strengthen the support and guarantee of community health service institutions, and to improve patients' awareness of the efficacy and risk of physical and medical integration services.