The Role of General Medical Department Belonging to Psychosomatic Medicine Course

Abstract

The training to become the general medical treatment specialists qualified by the Japanese Medical Specialty Board has started in April, 2018. “Patient-centered medical care” is one of seven skills that the specialists should acquire. Although psychosomatic medicine is useful to learn the skill, still it is not familiar to specialists in general medicine. Our division of general medicine of Kansai Medical University Hospital belongs to the department of psychosomatic medicine, and doctors in the division are skilled in psychosomatic medicine. Twenty-five to 35% of the chief complaints of the first-visit patients are caused by functional diseases. Most of them correspond to psychosomatic disorders, and it is often possible to diagnose them or complete the treatments earlier in our division than in conventional departments of general medicine. It is important for general medicine and psychosomatic medicine to compensate for each other, and we introduce our activities in this paper.