The development of academic family medicine in central and eastern Europe since 1990

BMC Family Practice

Research Article

W Henry Smithson¹  Anna Krztoń-Królewiecka²  Marek Oleszczyk²  Adam Windak²  Igor Švab³  Bohumil Seifert⁴ 

[1] Academic Unit of Primary Medical Care Medical School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK;Department of Family Medicine, Chair of Internal Medicine and Gerontology, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland;Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia;Department of General Practice, First Medical Faculty, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic;

关键词: Family medicine;    General practice;    Medical education;    Medical research;    Central and eastern Europe;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2296-14-37

 received in 2012-06-21, accepted in 2013-03-07,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSince the early 1990s former communist countries have been reforming their health care systems, emphasizing the key role of primary care and recognizing family medicine as a specialty and an academic discipline. This study assesses the level of academic development of the discipline characterised by education and research in central and eastern European (CEE) countries.MethodsA key informants study, using a questionnaire developed on the basis of a systematic literature review and panel discussions, conducted in 11 central and eastern European countries and Russia.ResultsFamily medicine in CEE countries is now formally recognized as a medical specialty and successfully introduced into medical training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Almost all universities have FM/GP departments, but only a few of them are led by general practitioners. The specialist training programmes in all countries except Russia fulfil the recommendations of the European Parliament. Structured support for research in FM/GP is not always available. However specific scientific organisations function in almost all countries except Russia. Scientific conferences are regularly organised in all the countries, but peer-reviewed journals are published in only half of them.ConclusionsFamily medicine has a relatively strong position in medical education in central and eastern Europe, but research in family practice is less developed. Although the position of the discipline at the universities is not very strong, most of the CEE countries can serve as an example of successful academic development for countries southern Europe, where family medicine is still not fully recognised.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Krzton-Królewiecka et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.