Clinical undergraduate training and assessment in primary health care: experiences gained from Crete, Greece.

Background: Primary health care (PHC) is increasingly being introduced into undergraduate medical education. In Greece, the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Crete was the first to introduce a 4-week long training in primary health care. This paper presents the experiences gained from the initial implementation of the teaching of practice-based primary care in rural Crete and reports on the assessment scale that was developed.

Bringing community involvement into a Cretan primary/hospital care center: an evaluation of population habits and attitudes toward health care.

In a small Cretan township hospital combining secondary and primary care, a questionnaire was distributed to a consecutive visitor sample. The questionnaire requested information on the participants' personal smoking and other life habits, perceptions and expectations of the delivery of the health care services, and attitudes toward their own doctors and others who provide various health services. Three hundred and one individuals of both sexes who were 15 years and older participated in the study (participation rate, more than 97%).

Unwinding Ariadne's thread: some methodological and interpretative considerations on international hospital admission comparisons, with special reference to cancer.

Hospital utilisation rates comprise the main available source of information on morbidity patterns and the need for health care in a number of developing countries. On the basis of the findings of a Greek-Swedish comparison of somatic hospital admission (presented per the 18 principal head groups of the International Classification of Diseases) between two regional University hospitals, a number of important findings and methodological questions are considered. Factors that can explain the large variations of hospital admission found are examined; in particular those related to disease definition, classification and coding, hospital services supply, professional behavior and practices, illness behavior of patients, and demographic and socio-economic characteristics but especially a true difference in morbidity.

Assessment of vaccine coverage of schoolchildren in three primary health care areas in rural Crete, Greece.

Objective: A school-based immunization survey was used to assess vaccination coverage of a population of children in the region of three Primary Health Care Centres in rural Crete.

Methods: The medical charts of 771 (92.6% of the total) students attending primary schools at the municipalities of Archanes and Hersonissos in the district of Heraklion, and Neapolis in the district of Lasithi, as well as the charts of 438 (68.

"Healthometer"--an instrument for self-distributed health screening and prevention in the population.

In the ongoing expansion of medical systems toward prevention and health promotion, primary care is increasingly recognized as a key vehicle and agent. In order to establish a comprehensive health dialogue in the population, there is a need for innovative instruments corresponding to the information and linked media revolution that this shift is a part of. Based upon the experiences of the Department of Preventive Medicine in Malmö, Sweden, a self-mediated, interactive health testing and promotion instrument called "healthometer" has been developed and tested for feasibility.