Ongoing

Master student: Ciara Fink

Monitoring measures are available for the care of people with chronic illnesses. These are carried out - regardless of symptoms or other findings - in order to optimize the treatment of chronic diseases.  The aim of the master's thesis is to record the experience and evaluation of patients and to develop possible recommendations for care. To this end, guideline-based interviews with affected patients are being conducted in a sub-project.

Doctoral student: Timo Ziegmann

In the course of research into the clinical development and testing of antidepressants in the 1980s, the diagnosis of depression was freed from its context. The national care guideline “Unipolar Depression” recommends a categorical diagnosis based on the ICD-10 criteria by recording and summing up main and additional symptoms as the gold standard. The severity of an acute depressive episode should then be determined using scales such as the PHQ-9.
An online questionnaire study will be used to investigate how general practitioners in Germany make the diagnosis of an acute depressive episode and whether and how they determine its severity.

Doctoral student: Verena Schäffer

Online risk calculators, models of spinal columns, educational brochures or handwritten sketches - there are a wide variety of methods and materials that doctors can use to visualize health information in their discussions with patients. 

In this doctoral thesis, we would like to categorize the existing methods and describe them in more detail using a few examples. The aim is to investigate the availability of visualized health information and its applicability for GP care and to examine a possible impact on patients in terms of increasing adherence.

Both a quantitative survey using questionnaires and guideline-based interviews with GPs will be used. 

Doctoral student: Tobias Langer

Starting this semester, the block practical course will be supplemented by an online seminar in flipped classroom format on important aspects of GP practice. In order to further improve the quality of teaching and the learning success of the students, this change will be evaluated by means of anonymous surveys of teachers and students. The data collected will be used both for teaching evaluation and for further research as part of a doctoral thesis.

If you have any questions, please contact us. 

Doctoral student: Yannik Weber, Katharina Albrecht, Hannah George, Lina Koch

As of January 2023, the surcharges for arranging a prompt appointment with a GP or psychotherapist through the GP practice have been increased. For patients referred by such an GP referral, the GPs and psychotherapists receive extra-budgetary remuneration for the care provided in the quarter. The aim of the project is to evaluate this regulation. A mixed-methods study design will be used to obtain and analyze the perspectives of the groups of doctors involved.

Doctoral student: Antonia Baldauf

The prevalence of obesity has continued to rise over the last decade, and since half of adult women and 65% of men in Germany are already overweight, new and effective obesity prevention and treatment programs are needed. As part of the HAPpEN pilot study, a family doctor-centered obesity prevention program based at the University of Bayreuth is to be used. In order to better assess the relevance of such a project, the current situation of obesity care in rural Bavaria is to be recorded in a quantitative study. In addition, guideline-based individual interviews with GPs will be used to identify current gaps in obesity care in rural areas.

Doctoral student: Romy Schilling

Informing patients about diagnostic interventions and their alternatives is a central medical task. Evidence-based decision aids can be valuable tools. If coronary heart disease is suspected, the use of such a decision aid is recommended in the case of an upcoming cardiac catheterization. The patient sheet available for this purpose in the NDMG CHD [HS1] was only recently updated.

It is not yet known how the patient information sheet is understood and whether it supports the decision-making process. The aim of the study is to evaluate the patient information sheet and to describe the decision-making behavior for or against a cardiac catheterization.

Doctoral student: Johanna Brunner

Every day, GPs issue dozens of prescriptions for their patients. To make this process easier and safer, it was decided to introduce electronic prescriptions as part of the digitalization of the healthcare system. A test phase for the e-prescription began in 2021 and since fall 2022 it has been introduced in various regions in Germany in stages.

Guided interviews will be used to investigate how this process is perceived by GPs and what drivers and barriers they can identify in the introduction of the ePrescription and its implementation.

Doctoral student: Verena Lopez

General practitioners play a central role in the care of palliative patients. Many patients wish to die in their own home environment. There is also a good relationship of trust with the respective GPs due to many years of care, which makes them valuable contacts. At the same time, this can lead to challenging and psychologically and emotionally stressful situations for the doctors providing care.

As part of the BELPA project, we would like to use questionnaires and guided individual interviews to find out how these stresses are dealt with and assess whether the principle of “Advance Care Planning” can provide possible support for GPs.

Doctoral student: Katrin Schöffel

Although medical care at the end of life and its planning are becoming increasingly important, the process of drawing up an advance directive - with or without medical support - is usually not standardized and involves little integration of available scientific data. In order to remedy this situation, GPs are to be provided with tools in the future. These can be used to facilitate consultations for the preparation of advance directives and to support consultations on the basis of scientific evidence.

To create these tools, the most important influencing factors and their weighting on medical advice on life-prolonging measures - in particular mechanical ventilation in the case of ventilator dependency - are to be determined by means of a case vignette analysis when a living will is drawn up without cause.

Doctoral student: Benedikt Stelzner

The problem of overuse has been documented in numerous studies to date. Too many medical services without sufficiently proven benefits can harm patients both physically and psychologically. Up to now, it has mainly been the views of doctors and patients that have been examined. However, new studies show that the problem of overuse also plays a role for therapists. In order to reduce unnecessary treatments and thus save costs, all those involved in the healthcare system must be involved as much as possible.

The aim of this study is to explore therapists' perceptions of overuse: What do therapists understand by overprovision, what experiences have they had with it and what reasons do they blame for it? Using guided individual interviews, therapists from the fields of physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy are asked about the topic. This is followed by a qualitative evaluation.

Doctoral student: Sara Wheeler

General practitioners face major challenges in ensuring that they can continue to provide comprehensive care in the future, especially in rural areas. New concepts are needed to counteract capacity bottlenecks. One possible solution is the implementation of interprofessional case discussions, as is already being done in some other countries.

With the help of guided focus groups and individual interviews, the aim is to find out how GPs in Bavaria currently work with regard to interprofessionality, as well as their opinions and experiences of interprofessional case discussions. The main aim is to find out for which patients case discussions would be relevant and whether they can be implemented in everyday practice. Doctors from urban and rural areas are to be surveyed in order to identify possible differences.

Doctoral student: Christiane Waizner

In the outpatient sector, general practitioners play a central role in the care of chronically ill patients. Multimorbid patients with chronic illnesses in particular are often cared for by various healthcare professionals and are dependent on their interprofessional cooperation. But how do patients currently experience their healthcare? Is there cooperation between the different professional groups? What could be improved? These and other questions are explored in guided online interviews. The perception and experience of interprofessional collaboration from the patient's perspective will be determined. The aim of the work is to develop a concept for outpatient care based on suggestions from patients.

Doctoral student: Anna-Lena Seiler

A trusting conversation with the patient is a core medical skill and is receiving increasing attention in medical training. But how can this competence be taught in the long term and what exactly constitutes successful communication?

The aim of this paper is to explore the “interpersonal skills” often mentioned in this context. Inter- and intra-role conflicts, which medical students go through in the process of finding their professional identity, will be the subject of our analysis. The basis for this is provided by communication training with simulated patients, in which students are taught communication skills with the help of actors in the patient role. We will analyze this training autoethnographically from the perspective of both the students and the simulation patients.