J Am Board Fam Med
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While women are entering family medicine at higher rates than men, little is known about the present differences in practice patterns between male and female family physicians (FPs). We used 2017 and 2018 American Board of Family Medicine Family Medicine Certification Examination practice demographic questionnaires to assess average weekly total hours and direct patient care hours by age and gender reported by FPs. We found a gender gap between both overall hours worked and direct patient care hours, with female FPs reporting fewer hours across age groups.
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Patient safety in primary care is an emerging priority, and experts have highlighted medications, diagnoses, transitions, referrals, and testing as key safety domains. This study aimed to (1) describe how frontline clinicians, administrators, and staff conceptualize patient safety in primary care; and (2) compare and contrast these conceptual meanings from the patient's perspective. ⋯ Function-based conceptualizations of patient safety in primary care may better reflect frontline personnel and patients' experiences than domain-based conceptualizations, which are favored by experts.
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The COVID-19 outbreak is a stark reminder of the ongoing challenge of emerging and reemerging disease, the human cost of pandemics and the need for robust research.1 For primary care, the advent of COVID-19 has forced an unprecedented wave of practice change. In turn, Practice-Based Research Networks (PBRNs) must rapidly pivot to address the changing environment and the critical challenges faced by primary care. The pandemic has also impacted the ability of PBRNs to deploy traditional research methods such as face-to-face patient and provider interactions, practice facilitation, and stakeholder engagement. ⋯ These skills will become more important than ever as primary care practices evolve in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic and the disparities in health outcomes highlighted by COVID-19 and the global Black Lives Matter social movement for justice. Throughout this issue, authors detail the work conducted by PBRNs that demonstrate many of these evolving concepts. Articles explore how PBRNs can evaluate COVID-19 in primary care, the role of PBRNs in quality improvement, stakeholder engagement, prevention and chronic care management, and patient safety in primary care.
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Family Medicine was a child of the 1960s. Triggered by compelling social need for care outside of large hospitals, Family Medicine emphasized access to personal physicians based in the community. As a protest movement, the ABFP required ongoing recertification for all Diplomates, with both independent examination and chart audit. ⋯ Second, given the role Board Certification plays in supporting improvement of healthcare, Board Certification itself must respond to these changes. Third, to move forward, ABFM and the wider Board community must address a series of wicked problems - i.e., problems which are both complex-with many root causes-and complicated- in which interventions create new problems. The wicked problems confronting board certification include: 1) combining summative and formative assessment, 2) improving quality improvement and 3) reaffirming the social contract and professionalism and its assessment.
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This issue primarily contains practice-based research reports. For a commentary on these articles, see Tapp.1 JABFM also has a call for submissions and accepted pre-print articles specifically on COVID at our Web site, www.jabfm.org These online COVID-related articles will be collated into a future print issue. This issue also has additional articles, encompassing a range of issues, as is common for JABFM.