Annals of family medicine
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Annals of family medicine · Feb 2023
Supporting Mental Health and Psychological Resilience Among the Health Care Workforce: Gaps in the Evidence and Urgency for Action.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, health care workers have faced various challenges to their mental health due to extreme working conditions. Yet these workers have continued to deliver care in the face of stressors and death among their patients, family, and social networks. The pandemic highlighted weaknesses within our health care work environment, especially pertaining to a need to provide increased psychological resilience to clinicians. ⋯ There is an urgent need for system-level strategies that not only transform the way workplaces are organized, but also destigmatize, recognize, support, and treat mental health conditions among health care workers. There is also need for more evidence-based resources to improve resilience on the job, and thereby increase clinicians' capacity to address new medical crises. Doing so may mitigate rates of burnout and other psychological conditions in times of crisis among health care workers.
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Annals of family medicine · Feb 2023
Let's Not Reinvent the Wheel: Using Communities of Learning and Practice to Address SDOH and Advance Health Equity.
Despite advances in knowledge and science, evidence indicates that health care disparities and inequities continue to exist across diverse populations. Educating and training the next generation of health professionals to focus on addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) and advancing health equity is a key priority. This aim requires educational institutions, communities, and educators to strive for change in health professions education, to attain the goal of creating transformative educational systems that better meet the public health needs of the 21st Century. ⋯ Our work is an example that shows we can build partnerships across communities and professions, thereby freely sharing ideas and curricular innovations that address the systemic inequities that continue to fuel persistent health disparities and inequities, and contribute to moral distress and burnout of our health professionals.
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Annals of family medicine · Feb 2023
Patient and Health Care Professional Perspectives on Stigma in Integrated Behavioral Health: Barriers and Recommendations.
Stigma related to mental health is well documented and a major barrier to using mental and physical health care. Integrated behavioral health (IBH) in primary care, in which behavioral/mental health care services are located within a primary care setting, may reduce the experience of stigma. The purpose of this study was to assess the opinions of patients and health care professionals about mental illness stigma as a barrier to engagement with IBH and to gain insight into strategies to reduce stigma, encourage discussion of mental health, and increase uptake of IBH care. ⋯ Health care professionals can help reduce perceptions of stigma by having conversations with patients that normalize mental health discussion, use patient-centered communication, promote professional self-disclosure, and are tailored to patients' preferred understanding.
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Annals of family medicine · Feb 2023
Behavioral Health Within Primary Care Postgraduate Dental Curricula: A Mixed Methods Study.
This study evaluated the integration of behavioral health topics (anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, eating disorders, opioid use disorder, and intimate partner violence) into primary care postgraduate dental curricula. ⋯ Advanced Education in General Dentistry and General Practice Residency programs need to make greater efforts to include in their curricula training on behavioral health conditions, particularly anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, eating disorders, and intimate partner violence.
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Annals of family medicine · Feb 2023
ReviewTransforming Medical Education to Provide Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Patients: A Policy Brief.
Transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) patients experience a greater burden of health disparities compared with their heterosexual/cisgender counterparts. Some of the poorer health outcomes observed in these populations are known to be associated with the prevalence of implicit bias, bullying, emotional distress, alcoholism, drug abuse, intimate partner violence, sexually transmitted infections (eg, human immunodeficiency virus and human papilloma virus), and cancer. ⋯ Additional barriers to implementing affirming care training for TGD patients are lack of expertise among medical education faculty and preceptors both in undergraduate and in graduate medical education programs. Drawing on a systematic review of the literature, we propose a policy brief aimed at raising awareness about gender-affirming care among education planners and policy makers in government and advisory bodies.