The purpose of primary healthcare is to improve public health by providing easy access to medical care for preventing and diagnosing on time. Prevention of diseases and promotion of healthy lifestyles are crucial components of primary care physician’s work.
The presented textbook “Outpatient Therapy” contains a fundamental approach to the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases that are most often encountered in the daily work of internists and general practitioners of the primary care setting.
Special attention in the presented textbook is paid to clinical diagnoses, since accurately established and correctly stated diagnoses exclude errors in the choice of patient surveillance and treatment. In addition, incorrect statement is a common cause of divergence of clinical and pathomorphological diagnoses.
Diagnostic errors can be a threat to patient’s life, negatively affect the quality of their lives, be burdensome financially for both the patient (numerous additional examinations, long-term therapy and treatment of complications as a result of diagnostic errors) and the doctor (in case of legal costs).
The authors of the textbook “Outpatient Therapy” (2023) were given the task to present statement patterns for each clinical diagnosis, then to decompose the diagnoses into components, dwelling in detail on each point, consequently, to assemble the diagnoses into a single whole, as a “construction set”, and, in conclusion, to give their statement examples.
Since the authors of the textbook focus on composing the diagnoses, and the vast majority of patients of outpatient institutions is composed of multimorbid patients, a decision was made to present the most frequent diseases, found in the structure of multimorbidity.
Textbook chapters contain modern algorithms for managing outpatients, which are extremely necessary for doctors to develop skills and abilities for quick decision-making, correct orientation in various clinical situations and strategy development for providing timely medical care.
The textbook presents main and additional research methods at the pre-hospital stage, indications for high-tech diagnostic procedures and specialist consultations, which will help young doctors determine the correct diagnostic strategies, avoid unnecessary examinations that pose a burden for both the patient, and the healthcare system as a whole.
Team of authors distinctively emphasize the sections devoted to drug treatment, which is based on the evidence-based medicine principles.
One of the important work aspects of an outpatient doctor is the disease prevention. These issues are also reflected in each chapter of the textbook.
The textbook was prepared by specialists in the field of internal diseases, cardiology, gastroenterology, pulmonology, rheumatology, nephrology, dermatology representing the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University.
Presented material will be useful both for teaching students and practice for residents, postgraduates and young doctors who are starting their professional path in outpatient medicine. I express my gratitude to all the authors and reviewers, cyclical methodological commission on therapeutic disciplines and central coordinating methodological council of the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University for great work, enthusiasm and willingness to share their expertise, the publishing group that organized the publication of the textbook “Outpatient Therapy”.
Head of the Department of Outpatient Therapy,
Faculty of General Medicine,
Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University,
MD, Ph.D., D.Sc., Professor Vera N. Larina