Enhancing the management of long COVID in general practice: a scoping review

Background Long COVID is a multifaceted condition, and it has impacted a considerable proportion of those with acute-COVID-19. Affected patients often have complex care needs requiring holistic and multidisciplinary care, the kind routinely provided in general practice. However, there is limited evidence regarding GP interventions.

Aim This study aimed to address this issue by conducting a scoping review of literature on GP management of Long COVID.

Design & setting Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage scoping review framework with recommendations by Levac et al. was used.

Method PubMed, Google Scholar, the Cochrane Library, SCOPUS, and Google searches were conducted to identify relevant peer-reviewed/grey literature, and study selection process was conducted according to the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Braun and Clarke’s ‘Thematic Analysis’ approach was used to interpret data.

Results Nineteen of 972 identified papers were selected for review. These included peer-reviewed articles and grey literature spanning a wide range of countries. Six themes were identified regarding GP management of Long COVID, these being: (i) GP uncertainty, (ii) Listening and empathy, (iii) Assessment and monitoring of symptoms, (iv) Coordinating access to appropriate services, (v) Facilitating provision of continual and integrated multi-disciplinary care and (vi) Need to facilitate psychological support.

Conclusion The findings show that GPs can and have played a key role in the management of Long COVID, and that patient care can be improved through better understanding of patient experiences, standardised approaches for symptom identification/treatment, and facilitation of access to multidisciplinary specialist services when needed. Future research evaluating focused GP interventions is needed.