Family medicine
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Historical Article
Residency Training in Family Medicine: A History of Innovation and Program Support.
Residency programs have been integral to the development, expansion and progression of family medicine as a discipline. Three reports formed the foundation for graduate medical education in family medicine: Meeting the Challenge of Family Practice, The Graduate Education of Physicians, and Health is a Community Affair. In addition, the original core concepts of comprehensiveness, coordination, continuity, and patient centeredness continue to serve as the foundation for residency training in family medicine. ⋯ Residency Program Solutions, National Institute for Program Director Development, and Family Medicine Residency Curriculum Resource are several of the resources developed by these organizations. The future of family medicine residency training should continue the emphasis on innovation and development of resources to enhance the training of residents. Areas for further development include leadership and health care systems training that allows residents to assume leadership of multidisciplinary health care teams and increase focus on the family medicine practice population as the main unit for resident education.
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Historical Article
Family Medicine Research in the United States From the late 1960s Into the Future.
When the new field of family medicine research began a half century ago, multiple individuals and organizations emphasized that research was a key mission. Since the field's inception, there have been notable research successes for which family medicine organizations, researchers, and leaders-assisted by federal and state governments and private foundations-can take credit. Research is a requirement for family medicine residency programs but not individual residents, and multiple family medicine departments offer research training in various forms for learners at all levels, including research fellowships. ⋯ Nonetheless, in spite of much growth and many successes, family physicians and their research have been underrepresented in research funding. Clinical presentations in family medicine are often complex, poorly-differentiated, and exist as one of several patient complaints and diagnoses, and are not well-covered by the narrow basic-science and specialty research that defines most of the biomedical research enterprise. Overall health in the United States would benefit from a more robust research participation and greater support for family medicine research.
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Historical Article
Medical Student Teaching and Recruiting: 50 Years of Balancing Two Educational Aims.
Family medicine (FM) undergraduate medical educators have had two distinct missions, to increase the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of all students while also striving to attract students to the field of family medicine. A five decade literature search was conducted gathering FM curricular innovations and the parallel trends in FM medical student interest. Student interest in FM had a rapid first-decade rise to 14%, a second 1990's surge, followed by a drop to the current plateau of 8-9%. ⋯ Other tools associated with student interest include programming geared towards primary care or rural training and extracurricular opportunities such as FM Interest Groups. Strategic plans to improve the primary care work force should focus funding and legislative efforts on effective methods such as: establishing and maintaining FM clerkships, admitting students with rural and underserved backgrounds or primary care interest, developing longitudinal primary care tracks, and supporting extracurricular FM activities. Rigorous research is needed to assess how best to utilize limited educational resources to ensure that all students graduate with a core set of FM competence as well as an increased FM matriculation.
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Encouraging resident scholarly activity has been a longstanding challenge for medical educators. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has been increasing its emphasis on scholarly activity, forcing programs to evaluate their existing processes. This study sought to evaluate the impact of a scholarly activity point system on the resident scholarly productivity at multiple programs. ⋯ A scholarly activity point system was associated with an increase in resident scholarly production in family medicine programs. It appears to work best in programs that start from a lower level of scholarly productivity at baseline. A point system appears to be a useful addition to scholarly activity curricula.