Katharina Schmidt-Mende

I am general practitioner and specialist in internal medicine and work clinically in home health care. Since 2022, I am post doc at the Academic primary health care centre, region Stockholm, with affiliation to the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of family Medicine and Primary Care.

The driving force in my scientific and clinical work is the idea of equal and high-quality care for patients who have difficulties to make themselves heard. One such group is frail older adults with multimorbidity living at home, whom I care for as a general practitioner in primary care. Research in this population is sparse. Frail older people are generally excluded from randomized trials, leading to a significant mismatch between guidelines and their applicability in this patient group. My scientific research and clinical practice are interconnected, with research questions often emerging from my clinical experiences.

Since September 2018, I have been chairing an interdisciplinary research team (Hampus group, 8 members) together with Prof Lars L Gustafsson. Hampus group currently consists of both senior and junior researchers and has expertise in primary care, emergency care, nursing, qualitative methodology, clinical pharmacology, teaching, pedagogical research and digital decision support. Group members are affiliated to Academic Primary health care center, the Divisions of Family Medicine and Primary Care and Nursing at the Department of Neurobiology, Care sciences and Society, and the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at Department of Laboratory Medicine and Healthcare Services Board at either Region Stockholm or Karolinska Institutet.

We have established national and international collaboration with
1. Associate professor Karin Modig at Institute of Environmental Medicine
2. Prof of General Practice Bruce Guthrie, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
3. Associate professor Christoffel Kuenen, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå university

understanding and improving the quality of care of older people with multimorbidity in the context of primary care, including to design and pilot a care model to reduce emergency care in this population

exploring the evidence of treatment approaches that consider multimorbidity instead of single disease

understanding factors that promote longevity