Primary healthcare transversal research group

Problem

Primary care is the patient's gateway to the healthcare system, and primary care centres are the areas where most of the population's health problems are solved. It is an area where the relationship between patient, family doctor and reference nurse is crucial to preventing and curing diseases and promoting healthy habits.

Approach

The group conducts multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, essential for primary care professionals, since the daily life in their professional field requires a biological, psychological and social approach towards patients and their illnesses, both at the clinic and at home.

A comprehensive approach to the patient and long-term care throughout the patient's life allow the group to develop its own and/or collaborative studies to improve the knowledge of the population’s characteristics and of diseases.

Impact

The research projects that the group has led have shown, among other things, that an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening programme is viable, safe and feasible for early detection.

It has also proposed a new, one-hour blood pressure monitoring method to diagnose hypertension and classify sub-populations of hypertension. And it has found that an interdisciplinary and multifactorial intervention (with physical exercise, nutrition, polypharmacy review and social assessment) helps prevent fragility in pre-fragile patients and improves functional capacity, quality of life and adherence to the Mediterranean diet.