Dr George Samoutis, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor in Primary Care at the University of Nicosia Medical School and holds an honorary appointment with St George’s, University of London. He holds an MD, a PhD and a certificate of completion of training (CTT) in General Practice (Cyprus, UK, Greece). Moreover, he has completed a PGCert in Healthcare and Biomedical Education at St George’s University of London.

He is currently the Academic Lead for Clinical Placements (CS & T year MBBS4 and MD6) and General Practice Curriculum Lead for the St. George’s University of London Medical Programme delivered in Cyprus by the University of Nicosia Medical School. Moreover, Dr Samoutis is the Deputy Head of the Center for Primary Care and Population Health. He has designed the course for the Master in Family Medicine at the University of Nicosia Medical School in which he teaches in 3 modules (Evidence based Medicine, Multimorbidity, Research Methodology). In the past he also taught as a visiting lecturer undergraduate students in Nursing and postgraduate students in the MSc in Health Management. His research focuses on primary & community healthcare, chronic disease management, healthcare quality improvement (i.e. implementation of electronic patient records, clinical guidelines/ clinical audit etc.). He is currently involved in an array of EU funded projects (FP7, Horizon 2020). Furthermore, Dr Samoutis has been appointed as an international Associate of NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, UK). His research work has been published in refereed academic journals and international conference proceedings.  Dr Samoutis serves currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Compassionate Health Care (BMC). George has designed and organized a 6 module interactive course on Compassionate Care for hospital nurses and physicians. The course is based on the experiential-learning educational theories and covers an variety of relevant topics i.e patient centreness, communication skills, therapeutic relationships, shared decision making, self compassion, conflict transformation etc.

Moreover, George strongly supports the notion that compassionate care is the missing link between care based on best scientific evidence, and good, intuitive, person-centered, heartfelt relationships between carers and patients; thus, compassionate care can link these two to ensure optimum-quality healthcare. George is the managing director of the International Institute for Compassionate Care. Finally, George is a member of the birth forward scientific committee aiming to support the aims of the organization.