General Practice

Family medicine is the dominant academic field in primary health care. Moreover, it is the parent specialization of all other non-surgical physician specializations. The content of family medicine reflects the fact that primary health care is in the front line of all health care, i.e. it is the health care facility patients are expected to begin by consulting.

For this reason family medicine research focuses on the most common diseases and illnesses in the population, for instance cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, allergy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), musculo-skeletal disorders, low back pain, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, pharmacoepidemiology, and the most common infectious diseases as well as social insurance medicine (sick-listing and disability retirement). In the research programme the focus is on patient-centred research, using clinical as well as epidemiological techniques.