Family medicine
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Family medicine is the most demographically diverse specialty in medicine today. Specialty associations and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) urge residency programs to engage in systematic efforts to recruit diverse resident complements. Using responses from program directors to the ACGME's mandatory annual update, we enumerate the efforts in resident recruiting. This allows us to compare these statements to the recommendations of two highly respected commissions: the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Healthcare Workforce and the Institute of Medicine's In the Nation's Compelling Interest: Ensuring Diversity of the Healthcare Workforce. ⋯ The Sullivan Commission's guidance, IOM recommendations, and program-developed initiatives can be combined to create a comprehensive roster of diversity recruiting initiatives. Programs may use this authoritative resource for identifying their next steps in advancing their recruiting efforts.
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Residents-as-teachers (RAT) programs provide opportunities for residents to gain teaching skills. Published studies have assessed RAT programs largely at a single point in time rather than longitudinally. To address this gap, we examined (a) longitudinal trends in RAT participants' interest, comfort, confidence, skill, and familiarity with aspects of clinical teaching; and (b) subsequent involvement in clinical teaching. ⋯ The RAT program appears to be a positive contributing influence on family medicine graduates' perceived preparedness to teach and their involvement in teaching after graduation from residency. A relatively high proportion of residents are involved in teaching in the early years in practice.
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Preceptors in family medicine residencies need feedback to improve. When we found no validated, behavior-based tool to assess the outpatient precepting of family medicine residents, we sought to fill this gap by developing and initially validating the Mayo Outpatient Precepting Evaluation Tool (MOPET). ⋯ The MOPET is a theoretically sound, behavior-based, reliable, and initially validated tool for peer review of outpatient family medicine resident teaching. This tool can support faculty development in outpatient clinical learning environments.
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Integrated behavioral health (BH) is becoming a preferred model of care for primary care because it improves patient outcomes and satisfaction. Little is known about whether residency practices are consistently modeling this preferred care model relative to real-world nonresidency practices. The study compared levels of BH integration, patient health outcomes, and satisfaction with care between residency practices and nonresidency practices with colocated BH providers. ⋯ Primary care practices with residency programs reported comparable levels of BH integration, patient health outcomes, and patient satisfaction compared to practices without residency programs. Both types of practices require interventions and resources to help them overcome challenges associated with dissemination of high levels of BH integration.
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Workforce diversity in primary care is critical for improved health outcomes and mitigation of inequities. However, little is known about the racial and ethnic identities, training histories, and practice patterns of family physicians who provide abortions. ⋯ Differences in postresidency abortion provision existed between URM and non-URM family physicians despite similar training and intentions to provide. Examined barriers do not explain these differences. Further research on the unique experiences of URM physicians in abortion care is needed to then consider which strategies for building a more diverse workforce should be employed.