Background: Family doctor is a medical specialization that provides families and people of all ages, genders and diseases with comprehensive ongoing health services.
Objective: The present study wasconducted to describe challenges in the rural family physician program from the perspective of family physician program directors and family doctors in Iran using a qualitative approach.
Methods: We conducted interviews with 13 family physician program directors and 8 family doctors selected through purposive snowball sampling. The initial in-depth unstructured interviews were reviewed and transformed into semi-structured ones. The data obtained were analyzed in ATLAS.ti using the conceptual framework method.
Results: Nine main concepts (comprehensive planning, medical insurance system, compensation for services, performance evaluation, welfare facilities, recruiting and retaining a workforce, information system, culture-building and financing) and 27 subgroups emerged from the analysis of the data.
Conclusion: The main challenges in the family physician program include cultural, economic and environmental factors and work conditions. The implementation of this program can be improved through building a community culture and exercising minor and major modifications.
Keywords: Challenges; content analysis; family doctor; qualitative approach..
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