No common understanding of profession terms utilized in health services research

Primary care is becoming more and more popular worldwide because research over the last 40 years has provided evidence that strong primary care is associated with better health indicators, comparatively lower socioeconomic inequality and lower rates of unnecessary hospitalization [1‐4]. Although there is ample evidence for the benefits of strong primary care systems, it is not completely clear which factors are of primary importance for these benefits; this makes further research in different primary care settings highly relevant [5‐9]. Europe is an excellent laboratory to observe and assess different primary care systems which are located geographically close together [7, 10, 11]; however, the systems differ not only from a structural or organizational point of view but also in terms of their traditional terminology as well as their education and training systems for primary care [12‐14]. Ideally, the same term should mean the same to the study participants as to persons who interpret the results of the study [12] but even in studies with a very profound and comprehensive questionnaire development process, such as the Quality and Costs in Primary Care (QUALICOPC) study [15] some terminology obstacles remain: while going through the initial findings of the Austrian part of the QUALICOPC project regarding primary care professionals it became obvious that the terminology used and translated did not seem to be the same for the participating GPs. Therefore, we performed an add-on study which aimed to analyze the scope of differences in terminology used by GPs for selected primary care professions, namely nurses and medical secretaries working in the primary care sector in Austria. Additionally, we analyzed the term “independently” in relation to the tasks and responsibilities of nurses and medical secretaries. Does it mean the person simply performs the task by alone (by order of someone who is then subsequently accountable for the outcome) or does it mean the individual performs the task autonomously and is, additionally, accountable for it? It is not the pure linguistic focus that the paper wants to add, it has to do with the complex also cultural intertwining of the way health systems and health services are shaped in Europe, and the words we used to indicate certain professionals in those services and systems.

To our knowledge this is the first study that investigated the understanding by GPs of the different meaning, underlying education, and professional responsibilities of different health professions. Surprisingly, not much research on these important terminological/semantic aspects for health services research has been done so far. The results show that no common understanding of the terms for the selected health professions could be found among Austrian GPs; furthermore, in relation to task performance for all of them the term “independently” meant responsible by order/delegation. It became obvious that some GPs meant different professions with different underlying pregraduate and postgraduate training when talking about Krankenschwester/-pfleger which ranged from auxiliary nurses to graduated nurses. One reason could have been the use of the vernacular word for this profession, such as was done in the QUALICOPC study instead of the correct professional term. In general, all nurses in Austria are graduated nurses. The minimum requirement to become a graduated nurse is a successfully completed low secondary level of education (9 years of school education) plus 2 further school years. The professional education comprises 4600 h of theoretical and practical courses within 3 years. The entire education and training takes place in the hospital sector; no special education for the ambulatory sector is available. Graduated nurses in Austria are not allowed to make diagnoses, order diagnostic tests or prescribe medications. With the exception of tasks, such as how to wash or bed a patient which they do autonomously they work under supervision and/or by order of physicians [25], however, it is planned that nurses should receive more autonomy in patient care within the coming years [26].

When it came to the description of the staff in their offices, the situation was even more diverse; the majority of staff members were subsumed by the GP under the term practice assistant OrdinationsassistentIn, although in reality nurses and medical secretaries, two different professions, were meant. The term OrdinationsassistentIn is the correct Austrian term for a medical secretary. To become a medical secretary in Austria it is obligatory since the year 2014 to successfully complete a training course. Before 2014 anybody could become a health secretary who was at least 18 years old and successfully completed 9 years of school education. This training course is offered by the Austrian Chamber of Physicians [27] or other institutions of further education and takes 1.5 years with overall 650 h of theoretical and practical courses in ambulatory care. The requirements are an age of 18 years and older and to have accomplished at least 9 years of school education; 4 years of elementary school and 5 years of lower secondary school. After this training medical secretaries are allowed to perform simple clinical tasks under supervision and by instruction of a physician or a nurse, such as taking blood samples, point of care testing, or helping with wound care.

All of them (nurses and medical secretaries) were not performing medical tasks autonomously but only under supervision of the GPs. The majority of the nurses did administrative tasks too and the medical tasks that were delegated by the GPs depended very much on what the GP was willing to or wanted to delegate. An example is vaccination; some GPs saw this as their own duty, some delegated this task to a nurse.

In general, for a GP the working process is substantially different depending on whether the nurse works autonomously or not. If a nurse is working by order only the GP still needs time to think about the patient’s complaints, to give the right order, and to check if everything was done correctly because the GP has the final legal responsibility. If a nurse is working autonomously, the GP can concentrate on other complex and difficult patient cases while the nurse is doing, e. g. all the chronic care visits independently at the same time. When considering the patients side there are studies showing that patient satisfaction and quality of care is the same or better if nurses take over certain tasks from physicians autonomously [28‐30]. On the other hand, one recent U.S. study found that those organizational cultures that emphasized collegiality and quality but not autonomy were related to quality evaluation and improvement [31].

These results point in the direction that the terminology reflects the hierarchical employment situation. Both nurses and medical secretaries perform tasks under supervision only, which leads to the assumption that physicians might tend to consider and name both as helper/assistant OrdinationsassistentInnen despite different professional competencies and related earnings. Although, in general, in general practice nurses receive a higher salary than a medical secretary, it is possible to employ and pay a nurse as medical secretary. In Austria, both professions have to be employed by the GP who has to be self-employed and income is based on a mixed reimbursement model, with fee for services as the predominant financial system in primary care [32, 33]. This payment scheme in general practice could hinder the real shift of tasks from physicians to nurses. This becomes clear for example with home visits: Austrian GPs get paid for home visits only if they do it themselves. Besides the legal aspect it is, therefore, economically not feasible for a GP to employ a nurse who is doing the home visits; the GP would not get remunerated but would have to pay a nurse for that service [32, 33].

Bearing in mind this diversity in understanding on a national level, it becomes even more challenging when Austrian results are to be compared to data, for example, from the UK. In the UK practice nurses have a completely different undergraduate and postgraduate education as they have different tasks and autonomy in relation to patient care. Depending on the level of education, a practice nurse in the UK autonomously performs diagnostics and prescriptions of medications besides others patient consultations [34]. It could be speculated that GPs from countries where nurses perform some tasks on a daily base autonomously, understand the term “independently” differently.

The situation in relation to “medical secretaries” is similar. In Norway for example, medical secretaries need to have at least completed the secondary level of education (12 years of school education) and the education and training takes 3 years [35].

Our findings show that terminology matters when it comes to research in primary care, at both the national and international level. This observation informs several recommendations regarding comparative research in health services:

A strength of the study is the qualitative approach which allowed a more in depth analysis of the ensuing findings. A limitation could be a possible selection bias of the participating GPs as their inclusion was voluntary; however, if taking into consideration that mainly highly motivated and reflective GPs participated in the study, it can be speculated that the answers would be even more diverse in other GP samples. In addition, it has to be considered that we interviewed GPs only. It would have been interesting to interview nurses and health secretaries too since the terminology about these profession groups were explored in this study.

No homogeneous understanding for terms commonly used for health professions could be found among Austrian GPs. In contrast, it was clear for Austrian GPs that the term “independently” in respect to nurses and medical secretaries meant that these assistants would perform tasks by themselves but always on the order of the GP and not autonomously. These findings are highly relevant when trying to compare results with similar data from other countries or negotiating about workforce development issues.

Our findings implicate several action points for health services research and health policy. We propose the development of a harmonized terminology in Europe for health professions based on standards of undergraduate and postgraduate education, competencies and continuous education commitments. This would not only benefit comparative health system research but also patient safety across Europe. Moreover, the basis for negotiations would be the same.