University of Ljubljana, Medical Faculty, Family Medicine Department, SloveniaIrena Makivic, Janko Kersnik

MethodOur aim was to make a systematic overview of published literature on psychosocial dimensions of family practice. From all 743 hits from Pubmed, Google Scholar, EBSCOHost, JSTORE, Cochrane Library, OVID MEDLINE, Embase, All EMB Reviews and PSYCInfo, according to inclusion criteria 68 articles were selected. Detailed reading of those articles gave us 36 final hits for the purpose of this review. While searching online with bulling operators, selecting criteria was, that article contains something on: holistic medicine, quality indicators, family medicine, patient-centered care and/or bio-psycho-social model of the treatment. We did not include articles, which were not related to family medicine or did not measure quality indicators. We also excluded papers about education and educational programs. Although the psychosocial model is so broad, we excluded papers relating to palliative nursing and articles on alternative medicine. Included papers concerning the prevention methods, communication between the doctors and the patients, holistic approach and holistic healing, chronic disease management and evidence based medicine.

QUALITY EVALUATION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DIMENSION IN FAMILY MEDICINE REVIEW

ResultsSome of articles were measuring quality of health (care) or outcomes, quality of life, patient centered care, holistic or (bio)psychosocial approach and some papers were focusing on preventive aspects of primary care (health promotion, avoiding hospitalization, prevention or physical activity).

Findings have shown that adult respondents who reported a primary care physician rather than a specialist as their regular source of care had lower mortality and lower health care costs. The themes on patient-centered, behavioural or psychosocial medicine are rather good presented in several papers. But there has been little evidence about the quality of these approaches.

Conclusions→Little evidence about the quality of those approaches to patient and family medicine. →The problem on one hand is because of poor definition of psychosocial approach. →On the other hand the problem lies within quality indicators. →Little evidence about quality of psychosocial approach available in the literature, so further studies are needed. →It would be necessary to research the field of doctors’ holistic approach or doctors’ psychosocially orientation that influences the cooperation between the doctor and the patient, and quality outcomes of the treatment and the healing process as well.

Type of studies N %Randomised controlled trial 10 27,8

Meta-analysis 1 2,8Cross-sectional studies 12 33,3

Case-control 3 8,3Qualitative study 10 27,8

Total number od studies 36 100