“Ambition” and “Passion”
Keys for Family Medicine/General Medicine
Share your “Ambition” with us.
You may think it impossible to become true.
Believe me, we are here for you.
We can take it with all our strength and our heart
Exert your passionate ebullience
We are ready to support you.

Backgrounds and Aims

TMDU General Medicine/Family Medicine Network (TMUDGM/FM-N) is a network of hospitals and clinics which engage in practice, education, and research related to general medicine/family medicine or primary health care. More than ten healthcare institutions join the TMUDGM/FM-N in Tokyo Ward and a few prefectures surrounding Tokyo, Japan. The TMUDGM/FM-N is also known as a network for physicians and other professionals who engage in these activities. Members of the TMUDGM/FM-N build a weak tie with each other or facility, and collaborate closely in each activity.
The TMUDGM/FM-N engages in following activities for people in community all over the world to stay in healthy and happy lives:
1. To conduct research more efficiently and provide effective practices in general medicine/family medicine and primary health care.
2. To foster general medicine, family physicians, general practitioners, and healthcare professionals, who can practice in the field of general medicine/family medicine and primary health care
3. To nurture more advanced personnel who can educate general medicine/family physicians, healthcare professionals, educators, or researchers in the field of general medicine/family medicine and primary health care.

Our Activity
Education
The TMUDGM/FM-N provide educations about general medicine/family medicine, and primary healthcare, for each generation of healthcare professionals, such as medical students, junior residents, and senior residents. As well, we provide inter-professional educations for the various medical professionals. Although some of our educations are provided in TMDU, lots of parts are undertaken in clinics and hospitals in community.
The TMUDGM/FM-N weighs importance on career-long education for general medicine/family physicians and other collaborating healthcare professionals. As well, we have activities of continuous medical education on themes related to general medicine/family medicine.

Graduate School
The TMUDGM/FM-N provides education and research for TMDU Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences. The TMUDGM/FM-N accepts international students from all over the world.
In our graduate school, we want students to learn how to resolve problems in the real community via research. Our research should not be mere finding or exploring the facts, but contribute towards people in communities. Research is only one of the tools for resolving problems in communities, improving clinical practices, and contributing to patients and people in community. Therefore, we should keep in our mind to implement the research findings into the real world.
To enable students to fulfill our aims above mentioned, we provide didactic lectures about general medicine/family medicine, biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, qualitative research, how to build questionnaire and so on. However, attending these lectures for students is not enough to resolve problems in communities and they should: approach the target community or field; get familiar with the people living there; feel known or unknown needs from the people living there; and suggest some resolution for their needs or problems. These processes require students not only technical and academic skills, but also communication or social skills. As well, these processes train students to learn by their own mistakes. Therefore, we provide students safe environments to think their own interests for themselves.

Research
The TMUDGM/FM-N conducts research several themes in general medicine/family medicine, communication, community medicine, and medical education. We especially focus on the behavioral aspects of patients and medical professionals, as well as collaborations between specialties or healthcare professionals. We use both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
The examples of ongoing research are as follows:
1. Research on the relationship between the characteristic of physicians and patients’ medical seeking behavior or their health status
2. Research on non-verbal communication using artificial intelligence (AI)
3. reliability and validity of apparatus used in primary care setting (ultrasound, etc.)
4. Cost-effectiveness of the home care
5. Collaboration between primary care physicians and occupational physicians
6. To establish the method to build better team in medical setting
7. Relationship between the basis of the family medicine and health outcomes
8. Inter-professional education for students in medical school
9. Home visiting care for elderly in community
10. Other researches of family medicine/general medicine

Practice
The TMUDGM/FM-N provides care for the people living in their own community, in their own clinics or hospitals besides at outpatient department and wards in TMDU university hospital. Our practice is based on the principles and methods for the general medicine/family medicine, or primary healthcare. Additionally, we weigh importance on the collaboration between specialties, between healthcare professionals, between medical facilities, and between healthcare system and community. Moreover, we try to learn about the newest evidences for all the disease we can be involved.