The theme of the Conference is “Practising Person Centred Care”

Importance of the topic:

Primary care services in Europe differ in organisation and resources but all share the same ambition to develop a person-centred approach, orientated towards the individual, his/her family, and their community.

This can be established in a relationship over time with patients as partners in care. Effective communication and dialogue is paramount to patient satisfaction in general practice. Listening carefully and tailoring information to patient needs in a safe and trusted environment may be as important as diagnosis and treatment.

Considering the current context of medicine, general practitioners are increasingly using guidelines, quality measures, and other tools for decision making. These are generic and often based on the best available evidence. In clinical practice, however, patients are diverse due to gender, age, ethnicity, social status, health skills and personal needs. Thus, integrating research evidence with patient views and experiences in order to deliver person centred care is challenging.

“Practicing Person Centred Care” at the 2021 Conference:

Key topics related to person centred care that will be addressed are shared decision making, diversity, patient and professional education.

Communication between GPs and patients also include online consultation and e-health. E-health applications are increasingly used as additional tools to optimise person centred care. Clinical as well as ethical issues of new developments and innovations in general practice will be discussed.

Special attention will be given to teaching person centred care in GP training programmes, with a focus on strengthening the role of the patient in general practice and how to involve patients in clinical decision making.

The conference will offer many opportunities to present research findings and to participate in workshops, networking meetings, and interactive sessions to discuss and to support person centred care in general practice.