German Respiratory Society
In compliance with the educational and awareness-raising mission laid down in its statutes, the Society promotes cooperation with professional and specialist organizations with similar objectives, including the Deutsche Atemwegsliga e.V.
[6] The DGP also organizes concerted actions to promote pulmonary research, strengthen the position of respiratory medicine in medical education and training and to lobby politicians and parties for e.g. the protection of non-smokers.
The DGP participates as an organization in projects of these bodies, and individual DGP members have fulfilled and continue to fulfil important functions, for instance the publication of the European Lung White Book of the ERS (2nd edition 2013) or the ERS HERMES programme (Harmonized Education in Respiratory Medicine for European Specialists).
To facilitate the start of young physicians interested in respiratory medicine, the DGP has established a forum, the working group for promoting junior doctors and researchers, as well as a training academy, the Respiratory Medicine Training Academy, that organizes its own educational and scientific programme and runs a dedicated website for young pneumology professionals.
[7] To ensure that Germany does not fall behind international developments in the specialty, the DGP proactively encourages greater emphasis on teaching of respiratory medicine to medical students and the creation of separate university professorships in pneumology.
[8] The roots of the DGP go back to the Vereinigung der Lungenheilanstaltsärzte ("Association of Tuberculosis Sanatorium Physicians") founded by, among others, Ludolph Brauer (1865–1951) in 1910.
The key principle was not so much the promotion of specialized research activities as an interdisciplinary approach to "gather together the knowledge of tuberculosis scattered and hidden in all the different disciplines".
Among the founders of the DTG were renowned tuberculosis specialists such as Ludolph Brauer, Otto Ziegler, Franz Redeker, Johannes Ritter, Oskar Pischinger and Ernst von Romberg and surgeons such as Ferdinand Sauerbruch.
Initially, activities focused on DTG meetings, the detailed minutes ("proceedings") of which appeared in Beiträge zur Klinik der Tuberkulose ("Contributions to the Clinic for Tuberculosis") published by Ludolph Brauer.
TB sufferers who were regarded as being "incurable" and "recalcitrant" were stigmatised as being "asocial bacillus spreaders" who had to be dealt with using "compulsory measures".
The Nazi ideology saw them as being worthless to the "Aryan German people's community"; they were socially neglected, sometimes systematically starved and even singled out to be murdered in euthanasia centres and concentration camps.
[16] The DGP integrated medical advances in pulmonary function diagnostics, bronchoscopy, oxygen long-term therapy and computer tomography into its work, as did other forums such as the Gesellschaft für Lungen- und Atemwegsforschung ("Society for Lung and Airway Research").
The sections, each of which is, as a rule, headed by two spokespersons, offer their members regular postgraduate educational programmes and draw up the guidelines approved and published by the DGP.
[20] The "Leitlinie zur Diagnostik und Therapie der idiopathischen Lungenfibrose" ("Guideline for diagnosis and management of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis") has also appeared in 2013.
[21] In addition to position papers and statements on current specific lung-related topics, the DGP publishes recommendations on e.g. "Infektionsprävention bei Tuberkulose" ("Tuberculosis infection control", 2012)[22] and "Belastungsuntersuchungen in der Pneumologie" ("Exercise testing in respiratory medicine", 2013).
