Augmentation of visiting specialist programs would be difficult in an already understaffed specialty.
There may be benefit from provision of visiting specialist services to this group.
Conversely, the use of visiting specialist surgeons has been demonstrated to be a highly effective strategy in some situations; the most notable local example of this is the provision of cataract surgery along the Thai-Myanmar border.
In the specific case of a chronic refugee situation, there are three, broad, possible solutions to managing non-acute surgical morbidity: 1) referral of cases to specialist surgical services (i.e. a District Hospital), 2) the use of visiting specialist surgeons to perform series of operations en bloc for specific indications, or 3) the use of a general surgeon, or some combination of these.
This might be the result of cancer patients directly visiting specialist cancer centres rather than general hospitals for treatment.
With regards to gender, women make more FP visits, have more chronic health conditions, and take a greater number of medications, but visit specialists less frequently than men.
The semi-structured interview questions investigated issues about the delivery and provision of eye health services, pathways of care and the co-ordination of visiting and specialist services.
The likelihood of visiting psychiatric specialist services increased with higher education and decreased with higher income in women (OR for trend 1.57, CI 1.24-1.98, and 0.69, 0.56-0.86, respectively), but did not vary significantly by socio-economic variables in men.
Women's probability of visiting a somatic specialist increased with higher income (OR for trend 1.11, CI 1.01-1.21) and higher education (OR for trend 1.27, CI 1.16-1.39).
For men, the probability of visiting a somatic specialist increased significantly with higher education (OR for trend 1.14, CI 1.05-1.25) (Table 3).
