Family medicine
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While there is increased attention to underrepresented in medicine (URiM) faculty and students, little is known about what they value in faculty development experiences. ⋯ Although this faculty development experience was designed to teach writing skills to URiM junior faculty, their collective responses indicate that they found value beyond the skills taught and appreciated the approach taken in this activity.
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Patients are best served by a health care workforce that reflects the diversity of their community. Increasing diversity of family medicine requires a long-term effort to recruit more medical students from underrepresented in medicine (URiM, defined as people of Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American or Pacific Islander heritage) backgrounds into family medicine residencies. This paper examines factors that influence URiM medical students to choose family medicine residencies. ⋯ The presence of teaching faculty and community preceptors from URiM backgrounds is correlated with the rate at which students who are URiM choose family medicine. People, rather than activities, seem to influence the career choices of students from URiM backgrounds.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to burnout among residents, a population already at increased risk for heightened stress and work-related fatigue. Residency programs were also forced to alter schedules and educational objectives. We assessed how social distancing restrictions (specifically self-isolation) enacted early in the COVID-19 pandemic affected family medicine (FM) resident well-being and burnout. Our FM department created a 2-week reserve rotation as a response to the need to socially distance and protect the residents. We explored how the reserve rotations impacted their experiences. ⋯ The COVID-19 pandemic placed an additional burden on residents, a group already at increased risk for burnout. While uncertainty and disruptions in work and home life were significant stressors, this cohort demonstrated adaptability and resilience that was facilitated by peer support and effective communication. These factors, along with the reserve rotation with decreased clinical responsibilities, led to an improved sense of well-being and decreased feelings of burnout.
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Our innovative, highly rated, interprofessional Primary Care Course (PCC) engaged learners in dentistry, medicine, nursing, physician assistants, pharmacy, public health, and social work. PCC used a low-resource, flexible classroom format, earned 99% high student ratings, and increased PC career plans in 56% of students. This study assessed changes in PC knowledge and attitudes and tracked PC career outcomes over 5 years. ⋯ PCC was associated with sustained increases in PC knowledge, attitudes, and careers across health professions. This low-resource, flexible format can contribute to building PC knowledge, attitudes, and workforce.
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Given their broad scope of training, family medicine residents were uniquely situated to care for the American public throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, yet little has been written about their experiences. The objective of this report is to capture the diversity of experiences and contributions of family medicine residents across the United States to the care of the American public during the COVID-19 pandemic. ⋯ The story of family medicine contributions to the care of the public during COVID-19 reflects the history of COVID-19 in the United States, and the critical role trainees and family medicine physicians have in the US health care system.