Irena Makivić

1. QUALITY EVALUATION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DIMENSION IN FAMILY MEDICINE
REVIEW
University of Ljubljana, Medical Faculty, Family Medicine Department, Slovenia
Irena Makivic, Janko Kersnik
Method
Results
Our aim was to make a systematic overview of
Some of articles were measuring quality of health
published literature on psychosocial dimensions of
(care) or outcomes, quality of life, patient centered
family practice.
care, holistic or (bio)psychosocial approach and
From all 743 hits from Pubmed, Google Scholar, some papers were focusing on preventive aspects of
EBSCOHost, JSTORE, Cochrane Library, OVID primary care (health promotion, avoiding
MEDLINE, Embase, All EMB Reviews and PSYCInfo, hospitalization, prevention or physical activity).
according to inclusion criteria 68 articles were
selected. Detailed reading of those articles gave us
36 final hits for the purpose of this review. Findings have shown that adult respondents who
reported a primary care physician rather than a
While searching online with bulling operators,
specialist as their regular source of care had lower
selecting criteria was, that article contains
mortality and lower health care costs. The themes
something on: holistic medicine, quality indicators,
on patient-centered, behavioural or psychosocial
family medicine, patient-centered care and/or bio-
medicine are rather good presented in several
psycho-social model of the treatment. We did not
papers. But there has been little evidence about the
include articles, which were not related to family
quality of these approaches.
medicine or did not measure quality indicators. We
also excluded papers about education and
educational programs. Although the psychosocial
Type of studies N %
model is so broad, we excluded papers relating to
palliative nursing and articles on alternative Randomised controlled trial 10 27,8
medicine. Included papers concerning the Meta-analysis 1 2,8
prevention methods, communication between the Cross-sectional studies 12 33,3
doctors and the patients, holistic approach and Case-control 3 8,3
holistic healing, chronic disease management and Qualitative study 10 27,8
evidence based medicine. Total number od studies 36 100
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.