Family medicine
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With the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an additional 34 million people will gain access to health care. Combined with population growth and aging adults, expanded insurance coverage will dramatically increase the demand for primary care services. To encourage medical students to pursue primary care, medical schools are integrating courses that will expose students to primary care medicine early in their education. ⋯ A week-long intensive course in primary care can influence medical students' attitudes toward primary care; however, the long-term impact on students' decision to pursue primary care is not known and needs to be evaluated. These findings provide empirical support for the integration of primary care courses into medical school curricula.
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This article describes the development of the first training program in family medicine in Ethiopia that was launched on February 4, 2013, at Addis Ababa University (AAU). The postgraduate program will prepare highly trained doctors for all parts of the country who choose generalism for their lifelong career. The paper describes a series of strategies that were used from 2008 to 2013 to take the Ethiopian family medicine program from vision to reality. ⋯ Family physicians will need to maintain a respectful relationship with other specialist physicians as well as nonphysician primary care providers. The development of this AAU family medicine residency is an example of a successful inter- institutional relationship between local and international partners to create a sustainable, Ethiopian-led training program. Insights from this article may guide development of similar training programs.
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The use of social media is expanding in medicine. A few articles sought to describe participant behavior using Twitter at scientific conferences. Family physicians are known as active participants in social media, but their behavior and practices at conferences have not been methodically described. ⋯ This preliminary analysis provides an initial snapshot of twitter activity at a family medicine conference. It may suggest avenues for further inquiry: trend identification, "influencer" identification, and qualitative analysis. Interdisciplinary research should focus on evaluation methods that can assess the quality, value, and impact of tweeting.