Preface

Colleagues, Readers,
Authors, Reviewers,
Members of the Scientific Committee,
Thematic Editors,
Members of the Editorial Board,

This issue of Family Medicine & Primary Care Review is the consummation of all our labor in 2017. Family medicine now seen as the basis of the healthcare system, and is certainly a healthcare specialty and a subject of scientific research that possesses its own body of evidence-based practice, educational content, research activity, and clinical activity aimed at primary care. Yet the modern healthcare system involves versatility, coordination, and cooperation between specialists in family medicine and those from other fields; it also seeks to extend patient engagement and empowerment. Being a result of cooperation between family doctors and experts in other disciplines, this issue is the best example of this. It is our hope that it will support you, our readers, in your research, while also providing practical information on everyday diagnosis and treatment. We are very happy to inform our authors that our publications have been indexed and abstracted in the ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index, Thomson Reuters) and EBSCO databases since 2016.
The present issue starts off with an original paper on general practitioners’ level of knowledge of their rights and criminal liabilities under Turkish legislation. Next, we present articles on academics’ knowledge of periodic health examinations; the association of vitamin D deficiency with metabolic disorders in elderly patients; characteristics, types, and causes of chest pain in an urban family practice secondary care center in South India; challenges in horizontal integration of eye-care services into the pre-existing rural primary care structure; the impact of muscle tone on the development of auditory perception; discrepancies in the occurrence of metabolic disturbances related to gender among young people; the efficacy of fathers’ attachment training on paternal–fetal attachment and parental anxiety; a psychological profile of female students with a tendency to anorexia nervosa; emotional intelligence, attachment styles, and medical education; saucerization versus dissection on the repair of vesicovaginal fistulae; polypharmacy, medication adherence, and medication management at home in elderly patients with multiple noncommunicable diseases in Thai primary care; prepregnancy BMI and intake of energy and calcium are associated with the vitamin D intake of pregnant Malaysian women.
The reviews section in our current issue includes an article on a Ukrainian health care reform based on the principles of family medicine. In particular, we strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the article in the CME
section describing a study on endophthalmitis following cataract surgery in diabetic patients. To close the year, I would like to express my thanks for all our Authors, Thematic Editors, Reviewers, and Members of the Editorial Board. It was their great efforts in the previous year that resulted in the publication of even higherquality articles and our quarterly receiving higher scores from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (12 points) and the Index Copernicus (ICV 2016: 120.81). We aim primarily to support our all authors and to continuously improve the informational content of our publication. To this end, we ask you all to submit the results of your research projects and to liaise with the Editorial Board of FM&PCR. Our Thematic Editors and the Members of the Editorial Board will be happy to assist you as your article passes through our Editorial System, as well as during the review process and editorial work. I also encourage you to come meet the Members of the Editorial Board at the Polish Society of Family Medicine (PSFM) stand during PSFM conferences, conventions, and congresses. We can also be found at the Continuo Publishing stand at training courses throughout Poland! I also invite you to the Seventh Congress of the Polish Society of Family Medicine, to be held in Wrocław in the last week of September 2018. We encourage those of you planning to make presentations there to write articles that describe those issues in more detail; such articles will be published in FM&PCR issue 03/2018.
With Christmas and the New Year approaching, on behalf of the Editorial Board of Family Medicine & Primary Care Review, I wish you both a peaceful time spent with those closest to you and success in your work at the turn of the year. May you have the perseverance to fulfill your passions in the New Year and to carry out research into the realities of family medicine – that will give rise to publications in the coming year’s issues of FM&PCR!

Donata Kurpas, MD, PhD, Associate Professor
Wrocław Medical University
Editor-in-Chief
Family Medicine & Primary Care Review