Family medicine
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Despite the persistent primary care physician shortage over 2 decades of allopathic medical school expansion, some medical schools are absent a department of family medicine; these schools are designated as "target" schools. These absences are important because evidence has demonstrated the association between structured exposure to family medicine during medical school and the proportion of students who ultimately select a career in family medicine. In this study, we aimed to address part of this gap by defining and characterizing the current landscape of US allopathic target schools. ⋯ With growing primary care workforce gaps, target schools have a responsibility to enhance family medicine presence and representation at their institutions. We provide recommendations at the institutional, specialty, and national level to increase family medicine representation at target schools, with the goal that all schools eventually establish a department of family medicine.
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We submitted research questions to the Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (CERA) to assess the format of family medicine resident education about health disparities associated with incarceration and the perceived efficacy of efforts to prepare graduates for competent care of formerly incarcerated patients in practice. We think this is a universal problem, and current efforts are insufficient. ⋯ PDs acknowledged the importance of training residents about health disparities associated with incarceration and about care for formerly incarcerated patients in practice. However, they identified a gap between what was currently offered and what is needed to impact perception of resident readiness upon graduation. This training was felt to be most important in university-based programs with 31+ residents in US communities of greater than 150,000 people. We found no difference based on geographic location.