Family medicine
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The Association of American Medical Colleges identifies telemedicine competence as an important skill for graduating medical students, but which educational methods are effective in improving student performance is unclear. We aimed to assess the impact of two educational interventions on student performance in telemedicine standardized patient encounters. ⋯ Early medical students had low performance at baseline in telemedicine PE and assessment/plan skills, but both a role-play intervention and faculty demonstration led to significant increases in student performance.
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Family physicians are well positioned to treat patients with substance use disorders (SUDs), expand access to care, destigmatize addiction, and provide a biopsychosocial treatment approach. There is a great need to train residents and faculty to competency in SUD treatment. Through the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Addiction Collaborative, we created and evaluated the first national family medicine (FM) addiction curriculum using evidence-based content and teaching principles. ⋯ The curriculum provides a comprehensive, ready-made, evidenced-based platform for training residents and faculty in SUDs. It can be implemented by faculty with all levels of prior expertise, cotaught by physicians and behavioral health providers, tailored to each program's didactic schedule, and modified based on the local culture and resource availability.
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Although researchers have identified factors associated with research capacity in academic medicine departments, less is known about how a department builds research capacity over time. The Association of Departments of Family Medicine's Research Capacity Scale (RCS) can be used by departments to self-categorize into five capacity levels. Our current study aimed to describe the distribution of infrastructure features and to evaluate how the addition of infrastructure features influences movement of a department along the RCS. ⋯ Most departments that increased their research capacity added multiple additional infrastructure features. For chairs of departments without a PhD researcher, this additional resource may be the most impactful investment to increase research capacity.
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While the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) designated cross-disciplinary telemedicine competencies, curricular implementation is at disparate stages across medical schools and with significant curricular gaps. We investigated factors associated with the presence of telemedicine curriculum in family medicine clerkships. ⋯ Almost two-thirds of clerkships (62.8%) did not assess telemedicine competencies, and fewer than one-third of CDs (28.6%) considered telemedicine education as important as other clerkship topics. CDs' attitudes were a significant determinant of whether teaching of telemedicine skills occurred. Awareness of telemedicine education resources and higher learner autonomy in telemedicine encounters may promote integration into clerkship curriculum.