Table 1.

Barriers of Epidemic Control in Primary Care

Barriers	Quotation
Inappropriate PCP scheduling and role ambiguity
Improper task allocation	“The male physicians were allocated to the checkpoint overnight. They are very tough.”
Inflexible policy	“In my community, residents born in Hubei, coming from or via Hubei were uniformly quarantined at home regardless of symptoms.”
Excessive inspection and meetings	“I attended the meetings almost every two days. The meetings usually last an hour or two, but I need to make preparations before the meetings or inspection.”
Ambiguous instructions	“…and the guidance [of epidemic control] lacks detail and fails to assign clear responsibilities to the specific group or person. Sometimes, even the supervisors could not give us a definite instruction.”
Difficult tasks and inadequate capacities
Overwork	“I work for almost 12 hours a day and have no day off…if one case was confirmed, then his neighbors living in the whole building, maybe a thousand people, would be quarantined. It required all physicians [from our institution] to visit.”
Complex task	“One [quarantined] resident called me at 10:00 pm asking whether she had [had a] stroke. She was really worried and contacted me at any time.”
Deficiency of workforce	“[It took me] a lot of time to visit the quarantined residents and no one could help me to analyze the data. I hope the paperwork could be specially assigned to someone.”
Lack of support	“I walked to visit the [quarantined] residents only with a medical mask. No gowns or goggles.”
Inexperienced community workers and insufficient cooperation
Incapacity of community workers	“Nominally, our work is led by the committee of community; however, it is we physicians that guide community workers to control the outbreak because they always turned to us for help if anything new emerged.”
Inactiveness of community workers	“When I warned [a community worker] that he was mistakenly measuring the body temperature, he still went his own way perfunctorily…they seemed careless to the work.”
Work gap	“The communication [with community workers] of work was not running smoothly at the start [of epidemic control]. They seldom informed us of their next step.”