[Providing practice-oriented social medicine in medical education--a lecture concept]

This article outlines the concept on which lectures in Social Medicine offered at the Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg for the past three years are based. In addition to the fundamentals of Social Medicine, in our lectures we impart practical and career-oriented knowledge of the social security system and socio-medical diagnostics and how to compile medical assessments. We thus try to make it easier for the prospective physicians to later give help and advice to their patients about gaining social welfare benefits. Additionally we instruct the students in the basics of preventive medicine and the economics of medical activity. Consequently they recognise the importance of these topics for their later work in a clinic or as general practitioners. Our concept is in accordance with the intended modification of the German legislation governing the permission of doctors to practise medicine. Improvements are planned which will gear medical training better with the requirements of a medical practitioner as well as offering more intensive instruction in preventive medicine and the economy aspects of health care.