The relationship between villagers’ knowledge with the reasons behind family physician program in Shahrekord (2010)

Introduction: Family physician program initiated in 2005 in villages and cities with residents under 20000. One of the objectives of this program is prioritizing health oriented vision instead of providing services so that wasting resources in the field of health is avoided. The aim of this study was to find the relationship between villagers’ knowledge with the reasons behind Family Physician Program in Shahrekord Materials and Methods: In this descriptive analytical survey, 1100 individuals under the program of rural family physician in Shahrekord were selected by multi-stage cluster random method. Data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed by t-test, Chi-square, Pearson and spearman correlation tests. Results: Mean age of the studied population was 34.23± 14.71 years. The highest percentage (43.8%) of people with very poor knowledge expressed low cost visit and medication as the reason of choosing family doctor program and the highest percentage (%78.6) of those with higher knowledge expressed many benefits of the program in family health. Chi-square test showed that there is a significant relationship between villagers’ knowledge and the reasons of choosing family doctor program. Conclusion: Results indicated that people had no optimal knowledge toward family physician program. Also, there was a relationship between knowledge and the reasons expressed. Thus, more attention is necessary to be paid by authorities to this specific topic and some measures are essential in training people.