Family medicine
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COVID-19 has had an unprecedented effect on faculty of academic family medicine departments. We sought to characterize faculty's self-reported changes in engagement and productivity in clinical, education, and scholarly efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to correlate the changes with age, gender, and level of COVID-19 exposure. We also sought to determine if differences in faculty engagement and productivity were related to departmental efforts to create virtual community, manage conflict, foster engagement with colleagues, and support faculty emotional well-being. ⋯ Clinical, teaching, and research engagement and productivity for academic family physicians decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty well-being and departmental interventions lessened the impact of diminished productivity and research engagement.
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Structural racism is a cause of health disparities. Graduate medical education is tasked with training physicians who understand and address disparities. Addressing health disparities includes education on racism, such as racial justice curricula (RJC). We surveyed program directors (PDs) about the prevalence and characteristics of RJC in family medicine residency programs (FMRPs). ⋯ In this national survey, most FMRPs reported no RJC. Most respondent PDs endorsed that it is important for family physicians to understand structural racism and that RJC should be included in residency. Lack of faculty training was the greatest barrier to implementation. Research is needed to evaluate existing RJC and explore strategies for overcoming barriers to implemention.
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Contraception is a core component of family medicine residency curriculum. Institutional environments can influence residents' access to contraceptive training and thus their ability to meet the reproductive health needs of their patients. ⋯ To ensure that residents have access to adequate contraceptive training, residencies should proactively seek faculty and training environments that meet residents' needs, and should make limitations on services clear to potential residents and patients.
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Community engagement (CE), including community-engaged research, is a critical tool for improving the health of patients and communities, but is not taught in most medical curricula, and is even rarer in leadership training for practicing clinicians. With the growth of value-based care and increasing concern for health equity, we need to turn our attention to the benefits of working with communities to improve health and health care. The objective of this brief report is to increase understanding of the perceived benefits of CE training for primary care clinicians, specifically those already working. ⋯ Educating primary care clinicians in CE as a foundational principle can orient them to the criticality of stakeholder engagement for daily practice, practice transformation, and population health improvement, and provides them with a new understanding of their roles as clinicians and leaders.
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The primary goal of family medicine residency training is for graduates to provide high-quality, safe, and effective patient care for the population they serve when they enter practice. This study explores (a) the practice profiles, 5 years into practice, of residents who completed family medicine training in Ontario, Canada; and (b) relationships between performance on the College of Family Physicians of Canada's (CFPC) Certification Examination in Family Medicine and quality of care provided 5 years into practice. ⋯ Graduates of Ontario family medicine residency programs were providing care to a broad spectrum of the population 5 years after passing the examination, and they performed similarly across quality-of-care indicators regardless of examination scores.