One of the major challenges of the coming years will be to get enough students interested in working as general practitioners and general practitioners. The Haslach doctor Erwin Rebhandl launched an important initiative in this direction last week: He invited ten students from the JKU Linz to a summer school. The eight male and two male participants were able to get a taste of the work of a general practitioner.
In pairs, the participants visited medical practices in the Rohrbach district in the morning – individual and group practices with and without a medicine cabinet – and looked over the shoulders of the general practitioners. In the afternoon, general medicine topics were then discussed in the primary care center in Haslach. And there was also time for group hikes in the Bohemian Forest.
“I created the summer school here in Haslach so that hopefully many students will develop a taste for it and pursue a career as a general practitioner,” says Rebhandl, explaining his motivation for offering this summer course. The cooperation with the Institute for General Medicine at the JKU Linz made sense for two reasons: “At no other university in Austria does general medicine have such a high priority in teaching as in Linz. I’ve also been a lecturer there myself for several years.” Last week, Rebhandl was supported by none other than the head of the institute for general medicine, Erika Zelko: “This week is an excellent initiative from which our institute also benefits. The participants get a good basis for making decisions about possible work in general medicine on the way.”
“Broad spectrum” liked
The feedback from the students was quite encouraging. “What I like about this job is that you can work independently and deal with a wide range of patients and illnesses,” says Christian Deicker, who is in his sixth semester. Denise Müller will take away from the course in the Mühlviertel that “working in an individual practice sometimes means extra work, but you can organize a lot yourself. The services are not as rigid as in a hospital.” It seems that Rebhandl’s initiative fell on fertile ground. (live)
Source: Nachrichten
