Family medicine
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Letter Comparative Study
Does family medicine training affect the referral pattern of primary care doctors in Thailand?
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Teaching physical examination skills effectively, consistently, and cost-effectively is challenging. Faculty time is the most expensive resource. One solution is to train medical students using lay physical examination teaching associates. In this study, we investigated the feasibility, acceptability, and cost-effectiveness of training medical students using teaching associates trained by a lay expert instead of a clinician. ⋯ We believe that our program is popular with students, cost-effective, and generalizable to other institutions.
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Racial disparities have been identified in a number of areas in clinical medicine. Limited data are available on osteoporosis screening rates between races. We assessed the racial distribution in Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) screening rates among African American and Caucasian women referred from our primary care clinics. ⋯ Significantly fewer African American women had BMD screening even though national guidelines do not differentiate by race. The large disparity between the proportion of African American and Caucasian women screened calls for more equitable BMD screening among races.