National Keynote
Assoc. Prof. Venija Cerovečki
Venija Cerovecki, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb and a practicing family physician at Zagreb-Centar Health Center.
She is the Head of the Department of Family Medicine at Zagreb School of Medicine she is teaching at several graduate and postgraduate courses and is a mentor in the specialty training for Family medicine. Her scientific interest includes research in the field of cardiovascular diseases in family medicine and primary health care, drug prescribing and quality assurance in family medicine. The area of her special scientific interest includes medical education and she is Croatian national representative in EURACT.
Family medicine as a scientific and professional discipline in Croatia.
Croatian family medicine has a rich and challenging past, but also a challenging present and future. Analyzing the development of family medicine in Croatia, it can certainly be concluded that the profession has always followed scientific achievements, implemented them in theoretical training and scientifically analyzed them, but has encountered and encounters difficulties in implementing scientific findings in everyday practice. This challenge requires a lot of effort in the future related to convincing decision-makers and stakeholders that scientific achievements and their implementation in everyday practice improve quality of care for the whole population. Family medicine as a scientific discipline was primarily developed within the activities of the Departments of Family Medicine, first within the Department of Family Medicine in Zagreb, and then at the Departments of Family Medicine in Split, Rijeka and Osijek. These activities implied involvement of members of the Departments of Family Medicine in the preparation of dissertations, but also in the implementation of international and national research projects, which were often connected with membership in European General Practice Research Network (EGPRN). Scientific projects are carried out through the activities of members of the Departments of Family Medicine as well as other family doctors in clinical and public health projects, which also promotes an interdisciplinary approach in family medicine in scientific activities. Family medicine as a professional discipline was formally developed in accordance with international recommendations. The fact that specialty training as a necessary component of the development of the profession was conceptually conceived at School of Public Health „Andrija Štampar“, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb in 1960. confirms Croatian family physicians as active participants in the development of the profession of family medicine on a global level. Since then, the specialty training of family physicians has been carried out and improved based on the recommendations of European Academy of Teachers in General Practice/Family Medicine (EURACT), European Union of General Practitioners/Family Physicians) UEMO and other international associations of medical education, primarily An International Association of Health Professional Education (AMEE).