Therapist

The therapist is one of key figures of modern clinical medicine. This is the broad specialist having the rich medical outlook and profound encyclopedic knowledge having a number of the special knowledge and skills helping it to carry out competently primary diagnosis, to appoint preventive measures, to analyze results of additional researches and to register the correct, effective treatment.

Need of consultation of the therapist

In life practically of each person there are problems with health attracting need of receiving the qualified consultation or even medical care sooner or later. If there were indispositions complicated by an abdominal cavity or thorax pains, temperature increase, sleeplessness, an ache in joints, weakness or other discomfortable states, and it is difficult to define the nature of these phenomena, it is necessary to go to reception to the therapist. In this situation consultation of the therapist – a right choice as holding primary diagnostic actions, appointment in need of expanded diagnosis, the analysis of the received results and making decision on further actions belongs to its duties. Timely consultation of the therapist will allow to establish origins of indispositions and to prevent transition of a disease to the lingering chronic or complicated phase.

On reception the therapist carries out primary survey and collects the anamnesis, that is finds out details of a way of life of the patient, specific features of his organism, hereditary predispositions, specifies details of emergence and course of an illness. On the basis of the received data during primary consultation the therapist does preliminary estimate of the state of health of the patient and appoints the corresponding inspection, if necessary directs to consultation to profile specialists. As additional inspection the therapist can appoint the following procedures: clinical and biochemical analysis of blood; X-ray analysis of bones, joints and bodies of a thorax, ultrasonography of an abdominal cavity, FGDS, ECG and some other diagnostic actions. On the basis of results of analyses, the received these inspections and the conclusions of profile specialists the therapist makes the diagnosis and appoints a course of drug and physiotherapeutic treatment, or directs the patient to treatment to the profile specialist.

The subsequent consultations of the therapist are held as necessary with the purpose of control over the course of treatment and the subsequent rehabilitation.

Local therapist

The special category of doctors is represented by local therapists. These are doctors "number one", the specialists first facing manifestation of an illness at most of people in our country. From this point of view such therapist is the major, key link in a health system.

The circle of their patients throughout a long time includes approximately same people. To some extent local therapists are family doctors as know stories of diseases of most of the patients who are constantly living in the territory of their sites. As a rule, the district doctor is familiar with the conditions of accommodation of patients, their way of life, hereditary predispositions and other factors capable to complicate a condition of the patient and therefore quicker, than the ordinary therapist, can assume origins of a disease and take measures for their elimination.

The local therapist keeps systematic account and observation of patients with chronic diseases (the dispensary account), controls timeliness of passing of preventive actions, promotes the direction of those who need it, on sanatorium treatment.

Competence of the local therapist includes primary diagnosing of a disease, appointment and holding the treatment-and-prophylactic actions necessary for treatment of seasonal infectious diseases easy and moderate severity, and also some other diseases which treatment is performed in house conditions and does not demand hospitalization. After recovery of the patient the local therapist estimates degree of his working capacity and issues the sick-list – the document certifying the fact of a disease and provided in the place of work of the patient.

Duties of the local therapist

Belongs to duties of the district doctor:

• to be well prepared for performance of the main functions of the local therapist: organizational, diagnostic, advisory, preventive, medical and rehabilitation;
• it is competent to combine thorough theoretical preparation with practical therapeutic skills, to be engaged continuously in self-education, being improved and increasing the professional competence;
• to be guided in modern sources of scientific and technical information and to use the gained knowledge in practice;
• as required to appoint additional special methods of a research: laboratory analyses, roentgenoscopy, functional researches;
• if necessary to direct the patient to consultations to profile specialists;
• to define degree of disability of the patient or to direct him to examination of temporary disability;
• for the needing patients to organize rehabilitation actions;
• to reveal infectious diseases at early stages, to inform on an infection in SES and to carry out necessary anti-epidemic actions;

Besides,

• the therapist has to establish indications for hospitalization of the patient and take organizational measures for its implementation;
• according to an established order, the district doctor has to organize and carry out preventive inoculation and deworming of residents on the site entrusted to it;
• has to organize and realize a package of measures for medical examination of the adults living on its site i.e. to perform routine inspections, to define need of medical and preventive measures, to make out and keep medical documentation, to timely do reports on the done work;
• the therapist working at the site is obliged to be able to make the preliminary diagnosis and to give feasible first aid at medical emergencies of the patients stipulated in duty regulations;
• on primary reception the therapist has to be able to appoint a complex of necessary treatment-and-prophylactic actions correctly;
• the local therapist has to have strong skills for carrying out a number of the handling procedures stipulated in duty regulations.