Canadian family physician Médecin de famille canadien
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To quantify the degree of non-attendance of medical appointments, as well as to identify the social reasons behind the missed appointments, at an inner-city primary care clinic. ⋯ Non-attendance is a multifactorial issue that causes a considerable waste of resources, limits the provision of preventive care, and negatively affects patient health. As forgetting was found to be a frequent cause of missed appointments, introducing a telephone reminder system might be an affordable and effective first measure to address non-attendance. Factors associated with poverty and other social determinants of health also affect attendance and are more challenging to address.
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To assess family medicine residents' knowledge of, attitudes toward, and clinical practices related to environmental health (EH). ⋯ Although family medicine residents are aware of the importance of assessing patients' environmental exposures, they lack training and mentorship in EH. As a health determinant of critical importance, EH should be a high priority for inclusion in postgraduate family medicine education.
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To explore whether there are observable physician characteristics associated with antibiotic prescribing for pediatric respiratory tract infections (RTIs). ⋯ Substantial variations were found among physicians in prescribing antibiotics for pediatric RTIs. Observable characteristics accounted for a meaningful proportion of this variation; however, some physicians have a higher propensity to prescribe than others do, which remains unexplained. Patient and regional characteristics did not explain much of the variation across physicians. In future, behavioural interventions should be designed and evaluated to target physicians with higher propensity to prescribe.