Our Guiding Principles

The future of family medicine

Family medicine plays a leading role in evidence-based health care. To fulfil this role, we encourage patient self-management, interdisciplinary teams, and targeted digitalization. Our most important investment is training students and residents to become first class doctors.

The Institute for General Practice and Family Medicine bridges the gap between academia and family practice: Our ambition is to rapidly implement scholarship into practice – and to identify new scientific investigations arising in important, unanswered questions in clinical practice. Our actions are guided by our key values: professionalism, a sense of purpose, and a scientific spirit.

Our research

Our research focuses on continuously improving the health and quality of life of our patients. We approach medicine holistically using the biopsychosocial model, which takes patients’ individual living environments (Lebenswelten) into account. We aspire for our research to make a groundbreaking contribution towards optimizing the quality of family medicine and primary care. Our scientific findings are therefore especially important to family practice teams and policymakers. Our research is conducted independently of the pharmaceutical industry.

Our teaching

Teaching at the Institute for General Practice and Family Medicine imparts knowledge and skills enabling students at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich to provide patients with holistic care based on evidence-based specialist knowledge. In this respect, quality and practical relevance are crucial. We actively involve practicing physicians in our teaching and regularly evaluate the professional training that we provide.

Our network

One of our core assignments is to exchange information with family practice teams. We also share information with national and international researchers and with other healthcare professionals. We support a stepped, integrated care approach for patients, which combines personal contact with the opportunities offered by digitalization.

The management of our Institute

For us, management encompasses self-management, project management and successful cooperation with our teaching and research partners. We strive for an ideal work environment for our team, for example with respect to equipment, resources communication and individual qualifications. Information and tasks, including responsibilities and priorities, are communicated clearly within teams.