[Flight and migration : A challenge for medicine in Germany]. / Flucht und Migration : Eine Herausforderung für die Medizin in Deutschland.

In 2015 about 1.1 million refugees came to Germany. As a consequence public health authorities as well as physicians in hospitals and surgeries were faced with considerable challenges and problems. Between January and March 2016 the German Society of Internal Medicine (DGIM) and the Professional Organisation of German Internists (BDI) initiated a survey among their members in order to ascertain which diseases and problems physicians were confronted with. A total of 28,063 members of the DGIM and BDI participated in the survey of which 3626 members answered all questions. This equals a response rate of 11.31 %. Of the respondents, 1865 (51.9 %) stated holding employment positions and 987 (27.4 %) were self-employed. The predominant number of physicians were under the impression that the composition of diseases needing treatment did not change within the time period under survey (55.7 % of employed and 73.7 % of self-employed physicians). Typical disease patterns of internal medicine were mentioned here. Most significant problems when treating migrants and refugees were linguistic communication, cultural affiliation, and psychological traumatic experiences. Little or nothing is known about the modalities of reimbursement for the respective health care areas, especially by physicians in employed positions (84.6 %). In agreement with the vote of the 119th Deutscher Ärztetag, DGIM and BDI recommend the introduction of a nationwide health insurance card for migrants and refugees.

[Basic principles of school-overlapping psychotherapy]. / Grundzüge einer schulübergreifenden Psychotherapie.

There are general factors (non-specific and communicative) that are used in the different psychotherapeutical schools, in different degrees of importance. We strictly differentiate between schools and methods. Plurality of methods is indispensable. However, plurality of schools seems to be of no urgent importance.

[Characteristics and problems of Balint groups with medical students]. / Besonderheiten und Probleme der Balint-Arbeit mit Medizinstudenten.

For a period of seven years medical students have had the opportunity to attend Balint-seminars in an intensive training course in the field of "Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy" during their clinical education. In groups of 10-15 students the participants study conscious and subconscious aspects in the relationship between students and patients in the setting of their practical work in hospital. Some of these students additionally hold supporting conversations with mentally and psychosomatically ill patients. This takes place at the Psychotherapeutic Department and at the Department of Psychiatry, both at Innsbruck University, and is supervised in the Balint-seminars. In addition to this psychoanalytically oriented supervision theoretic knowledge (socio-psycho-somatic aspects of illnesses, subconscious aspects in the doctor-patient-relationship, phenomena of transference and counter-transference) is being brought across. In the students' Balint-seminars both patient-related self-experience and the reflection upon the students' social role in hospital acquire special importance. The development of this model of teaching and learning and the experiences which have been achieved over the last seven years are described in this article concerning the practicability for a patient centered model in the education of medical students.