1) This document reviews literature on evaluating the psychosocial dimension in family medicine. 2) Of the 743 initial articles identified, 68 met inclusion criteria after detailed review, with 36 being finally selected. 3) The review found little evidence about the quality of psychosocial approaches in family medicine, due both to poor definitions and a lack of appropriate quality indicators. Further research is needed.

1. QUALITY EVALUATION OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DIMENSION IN FAMILY MEDICINE
REVIEW
Irena Makivic, BSc
Janko Kersnik MD, MSc, PhD
Department of Family Medicine; Medical faculty, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Background
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
some papers were focusing on preventive aspects of
Method primary care (health promotion, avoiding
From all 743 hits from Pubmed, Google Scholar, hospitalization, prevention or physical activity).
EBSCOHost, JSTORE, Cochrane Library, OVID
MEDLINE, Embase, All EMB Reviews and PSYCInfo, Findings have shown that adult respondents who
according to inclusion criteria 68 articles were reported a primary care physician rather than a
selected. Detailed reading of those articles gave us specialist as their regular source of care had lower
36 final hits for the purpose of this review. mortality and lower health care costs. The themes on
While searching online with bulling operators, patient-centered, behavioural or psychosocial
selecting criteria was, that article contains something medicine are rather good presented in several
on: holistic medicine, quality indicators, family papers. But there has been little evidence about the
medicine, patient-centered care and/or bio-psycho- quality of these approaches.
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 Type of studies N %
excluded papers about education and educational Randomised controlled trial 10 27,8
programs. Although the psychosocial model is so Meta-analysis 1 2,8
broad, we excluded papers relating to palliative
Cross-sectional studies 12 33,3
nursing and articles on alternative medicine.
Included papers concerning the prevention methods, Case-control 3 8,3
communication between the doctors and the Qualitative study 10 27,8
patients, holistic approach and holistic healing, Total number od studies 36 100
chronic disease management and evidence based
medicine.
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.