At the end of this year's summer Florence was not only an important historical and tourist city but also a meeting point of all those who do their every effort for a quality and modern treatment of a patient in general and family practice. The WONCA Europe conference, which took place from August 27 to August 30, joined the leaders of important associations and over 2500 practitioners. This year's meeting was distinctive for its different organisation of lectures and presentations. Special attention was paid to research in general practice. We have heard that everyday practical issues should inspire researches. Often the heavy work load of general practitioners hinder research and make GPs less productive in the research field. Especially aspects like co-morbidity, polypragmasy, variety of cultural background of patients, participation of patients in treatment, commitment to treatment and support of dying patients and their family should be subject to more thorough research.
The European General Practice Research Network (EGPRN) was present at the WONCA meeting with various symposiums and lectures. Prof. Christos Lionis led a symposium on differences in research capacity for general practice in Europe. International connections allow general practitioners to obtain knowledge on the latest recommendations for good clinical practice. National insurance systems, however, restrict finances, thus obstructing high quality work. Practitioners in many countries do not have the opportunity to participate in clinical research. Many countries still lack research institutes that would carry out a research in the primary care. This is a striking paradox, given the fact that the majority of health problems are dealt with in primary health care. The same message was heard in the workshop on practice based research network, chaired by Prof. Paul Van Royen. There is need for more infrastructure and organisational solutions for the development of research in primary care. Collaboration and networking can support this process. “But first of all we need more primary health care workers and GPs who recognize the challenges and opportunities, and are well motivated to take it up”, was said in this workshop. Every GP should learn to develop (research) questions; the way GPs are working in their practice, by critical reflection, looking at the context, defining goals, is anyhow very similar to the way GP researchers are working.
In his lectures Dr. Francesco Del Zotti stressed the importance of epidemiological research of disease risks in general practice. He suggested paying more attention to research of family disease risk as well as studies of patients’ understanding of health, in which the family plays an important role.
The workshop ‘Qualitative Research in Family Medicine’, which was led by Prof. Paul van Royen, Lieve Peremans and Danica Rotar Pavlič was well visited. Qualitative research is more and more established in the field of general practice. Yet, many ‘quantitative’ researchers are not aware of the complications and long duration of a good qualitative study. The workshop presented the advantages and disadvantages of this type of research, various methodological approaches, ways of formulating the core research issue, data gathering techniques and suggestions for data analysis. The participants were then divided in small groups and tried to find those issues that emerge in practical work with patients that could be researched by qualitative methodology.
House calls were a traditional duty of a family physician. In the last decade, the number of home visits is decreasing in many European countries. The importance of house calls and the differences between countries across Europe were addressed in a special workshop dedicated to this topic. The results of the international study on house calls carried out by EGPRN a few years ago were presented.
Two EGPRN lady representatives took part in the symposium on the role of female general practitioners in Europe. Although a growing number of female practitioners are present in medicine, this is a frequent topic in magazines and newspapers. There are not many studies analysing possible dissimilarities between the work of practitioners and women practitioners. The participants of the symposium suggested carrying out a pilot study by the next WONCA congress, which will be held in Paris in 2007, on the basis of which it will be easier to discuss the so-called feminisation of medicine. Furthermore, the EGPRN spring meeting 2007 in Nijmegen will be dedicated to the theme ‘Gender in family medicine’ as well.
If you are interested in primary care research we invited you to join the upcoming EGPRN meetings and present your work there. Or visit our web site at www.egprn.org. Danica Rotar Pavlič, MD. PhD, hon. Secretary of EGPRN