.

Welcome to the English web pages of the Institute of General Practice in Frankfurt am Main, Germany!

Below you will find a brief description of our work and what motivates us, as well as some links:

  • News
  • Team
  • Research
    • PRoMPT - Depression Treatment in Primary Care
    • LINNEAUS-EURO-PC - Learning from International Networks about Errors and Understanding Safety in Primary Care
    • DISMEVAL - Developing and validating disease management evaluation methods for European health care systems
  • Publications

What do we do and what motivates us

More than 50% of the German population pay a visit to their general practitioner at least once during the course of a year. Compare this with the mere 0.5-1% who are treated at university clinics and the enormous role played by general practice in the provision of medical care is immediately obvious. The Institute of General Practice in Frankfurt am Main is one of a few fully established university departments in Germany which provide the essential link between university medicine and general practice.

To some extent, general practice has an image problem. It is not as attractive to students as other specialized fields of medicine and is often regarded as somehow inferior to them. At the Institute of General Practice, we aim to correct this perception as we are convinced that if Germany is to continue to provide its citizens with a high quality, cost-effective health service, primary care must build the foundation of a restructured system, providing a coordination function and supporting those who require specialist services.

In order to prepare for this future role, our work can be broadly divided into two segments - education and research. We aim to equip medical students with the specialized knowledge and general practice skills that will provide them with a sound basis whatever medical career they pursue. However, we also attach the utmost importance to practical aspects of medical care and encourage students to come into contact with the patients and illnesses typically confronting the general practitioner as often as possible.

To meet the medical needs of an aging society, general practice research is of great importance too. Our current fields of research include chronic care in a primary care setting in which multimorbidity and polypharmacy are highly prevalent, the evaluation of disease management programs, patient safety, clinical decision support including the development of general practice guidelines and analysis and quality promotion.

For more information, please click on one of the links above.