About the group
Our most important source for external research funding is the Fund for General Practice Research (Norwegian: Allmennmedisinsk forskningsfond, AMFF), hosted by the Norwegian Medical Association.
Our major research area reflects the single most common health care intervention and the most common clinical decision made in general practice, namely prescribing of medications. Our aim is to identify medical needs in this field and to addresses GPs’ prescription practice in various ways in order to improve the quality of care.
During the last couple of years we have recruited several new PhD students, the first of whom are expected to complete their theses by end of 2011/beginning of 2012. We expect the number of annual publications from our unit to increase significantly during forthcoming years.
Guro Haugen Fossum is the head of the unit.
Projects
Our main activities in this field focus on the appropriate uses of antibiotics, psychotropics, medication use for the elderly (both out-patients and in the nursing home setting), for children and adolescents. Other targeted issues are medication use for primary prevention, hormone therapy during menopause, and medication overuse headache. Identification of and intervention towards vitamin D deficiency, and more optimal medication use for chronic diseases like asthma, COPD, chronic heart failure and diabetes are also issues we address by our current research.