Atencion primaria
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Ultrasound is a safe and reliable way to increase diagnosis capabilities, as well as an improving and speed up method for taking decisions for healthcare professionals of every medical specialty. Family doctor, who must be ready to address all kind of health problems for his patients, is the key person to incorporate this tool to his daily activity, acquiring the best managing skill, unknown nowadays, being quite large the clinical situations in the day by day practice, in which he can obtain benefit in a reliable and effective way. Due to this practice is explorer dependent, it's needed to assure the best competence of the professional who practice it, and define the benefits and potential risks its use can create, as well as its application scenarios, in order to avoid unnecessary explorations and minimize opportunity costs that this activity can add to a currently saturated agenda. This work pretends to summarize the current state of abdominal point of care ultrasound, and its utility for the family doctor, in those scenarios that can be potentially reliable and effective.
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There is a worldwide interest in involving patients in health related decisions, so patients can actively search for therapeutic options and choose course of action that allows them to have better quality of life and wellbeing. The majority of the instruments available to capture the degree of participation in medical decision-making are in English and have been developed in high income countries. ⋯ This study provides the first instrument to capture the prevalence of SDM in a Latin American country. This instrument will be critical in future research efforts that seek to explore to what extent people are being involved in the decisions related to their healthcare.