Teaching of primary health care in practice: a model using local health centres in undergraduate medical education.

In Finland primary health care has a long historical background. The local communities, the state and the church have at various times and places been responsible for primary health care during the last few centuries. In 1972, a major reform took place when a new Primary Health Care Act came into force. In the same year two new medical faculties, at Kuopio and Tampere Universities, began to educate undergraduate medical students. In both of these new medical schools special attention was focused on the teaching of primary health care. Today practical teaching, which takes place at a primary health care centre, forms an important part of medical education at Kuopio University. This teaching of undergraduate students is part of the regular duties of general practitioners and public health nurses in the primary health care centres of eastern Finland that have agreed to collaborate in the teaching programme. The main principles are presented for the teaching programme in primary health care at the University of Kuopio.