[The role of internal medicine and hospitals in preventive services]

Preventive care is an integral part of the integrated, differentiated, modern therapeutic and preventive doctrine which in the present period of ideas on health and disease holds the most important position in ensuring active health, so-called superhealth. The effectiveness of a wide complex of preventive measures can be ensured only if the entire society participates. Health workers whose profession it is to protect health must all participate in prevention at all work places incl. hospitals. Without the participation of in-patient departments the health services cannot fulfill their preventive role in the health protection of individuals and society. The tasks of internal medicine, incl. internal in-patient departments, ensue from the contemporary main tasks of this basic medical discipline. The authors give an account of the main forms of preventive activities in hospitals and draw attention to the complexity of implementation of clinical prevention at the present time. The implementation of preventive activities in clinical departments and the participation of hospital staff in prevention should not be impeded by any administrative or conceptual barriers or regulations for the activities of health institutions.