Profile and tasks of a medical university polyclinic in the past and present using as example the Medical Polyclinical Institutes of the Karl Marx University of Leipzig

: After a short survey of the historical development of the Medico-Policlinical Institute of the Karl Marx University Leipzig tasks and developmental tendencies of university medical policlinics are described, evaluating hereby the results of the Vth conference of higher education. They are understood as a university representation of ambulatorily working internists and to a large extent of the specialists for general medicine. Their main tasks consist in education and continued professional training of this group of physicians under integrative description of the whole subject internal medicine, a research oriented to practice as well as a guiding and coordination function for the ambulatory internistic care, taking into particular consideration the early recognition of a disease, in primary and secondary prevention as well as in a scientifically based ambulatory therapy of epidemiologically important diseases.