Welcome to the STFM Messenger Online
The STFM Messenger is the official news publication of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.
Each month, members with e-mail addresses on file with STFM will receive an e-mail with links to the Messenger's online stories. Members will be also be able to access the Messenger's current issue as well as its archives on the STFM Web site at www.stfm.org/Messenger.
We welcome your feedback on our member newsletter; send your ideas and comments to Traci Nolte, tnolte@stfm.org.
Faculty Announced for Family Medicine Residency Applicant Academy
Faculty has been confirmed for the two STFM Family Medicine Residency Applicant Academies. Faculty for the Chicago session, to be held September 16–18, include Kathy Zoppi, PhD, MPH, Community Health Network Indianapolis; Shobba Pais, PhD, Indiana University Family Practice Residency; Crystal Cash, MD, Cook County-Loyola-Provident FMRP; and Luigi Tullo, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Faculty for the Houston session,scheduled for September 23–25, include Jane Corboy, MD, Baylor College of Medicine; Suparna Chhibber, MD, San Jacinto Methodist Hospital, Baytown, Tex; Warren Holleman, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine; and Jonathan MacClements, MD, University of Texas HSC at Tyler. Thanks to all the faculty for their hard work on this project.
The Family Medicine Residency Applicant Academy is designed for international medical graduates (IMGs) who are preparing for interviews in family medicine residency programs. This Academy is intended to maximize IMGs’ potential as entering residents and prepare them for interviews in family medicine residency programs. The workshops will (1) inform participants what family medicine is and its value to the health care system, (2) help participants frame their knowledge and skills in ways that directly relate to family medicine residency programs, (3) enhance the participants’ knowledge of the US health care system so they can express their experiences in ways that relate to that system, and (4) refine the participants’ interpersonal and communication skills that they will use in residency interviews.
For complete information, including sites and registration information, visit www.stfm.org/img/applicant/index.htm.
The Patient-Centered Medical Home: Perspectives From The STFM Board Of Directors
Policy and Advocacy
The concept of a patient-centered medical home is one that holds great appeal to many primary care physicians and especially to family medicine educators. To be able to provide high-quality medical care for our patients while teaching our learners about the new model of family medicine in a patient-centered medical home holds a great deal of potential and excitement for us all. The question is: How will we be paid to provide care in this type of medical setting? That is a debate that is currently occurring on Capitol Hill and one in which we can all participate.
Much of the energy around the patient-centered medical home is part of the current debate being held on the renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). The House version of the bill, HR 3162, the Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 (CHAMP), currently has a provision to fund pilot programs to support the concept of a patient-centered medical home. Currently, this provision is being championed by Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV). In a letter submitted to the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Congressmen state:
“At the center of the medical home is a personal physician who partners with the patient to coordinate and facilitate medical care. Under this model, each patient has an ongoing relationship with a personal physician trained to provide first contact and continuous and comprehensive care. The medical home is responsible for providing all the patient's health care needs or taking responsibility for appropriately arranging care with other qualified professionals. The personal physician leads a team of professionals, which may include nurses, physician assistants, counselors, and others, who collectively take responsibility for the ongoing care of patients. The medical home does not restrict patient access to services or serve as a gatekeeper—rather it helps ensure that the patient receives the right services at the right time.”
On July 19, the Senate Finance Committee passed bipartisan legislation to extend the State Children’s Health Insurance (S-CHIP) program by a vote of 17-4. The Senate bill does not address either the patient-centered medical home or the Substantial Growth Rate (SGR) payment issue. The Senate could complete work on the S-CHIP bill before recessing in early August, but it may wait until September.
Another potential legislative act that will fund the concept of a patient-centered medical home is the revision of the Medicare Medical Home demonstration project. This bill would provide $600 million to advance the concept of a patient-centered medical home that uses health information technology to systematically manage the care of patients. This bill, however, does not define a personal physician as a primary care provider but opens the door to specialists who provide “. . . required ongoing care for a chronic condition or multiple chronic conditions.”
The biggest supporters of the patient-centered medical home are meeting as a collaborative organization to advance the concept of a medical home. Member organizations include physician organizations (such as the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians), consumer groups (American Association of Retired Persons), industrial organizations (General Motors, IBM), and major pharmacy chains (CVS and Walgreen’s). Along with 18 other entities, the collaborative is meeting to further define the concept and to develop possible legislative initiatives to advance the ideals of a patient-centered medical home.
The concept of a patient-centered medical home is gaining traction in the halls of Congress. While not a central piece of STFM’s legislative agenda, we will try to provide continued access to information about legislation that addresses the concept and encourage our members to stay involved and informed.
Update
Since this article was first published, the House of Representatives has passed the CHAMP (Children’s Health and Medicare Protection) Act. This act provides a total of $50 billion dollars for continuation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP,) a short term fix to Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula and funds for a patient centered medical home demonstration project. The Senate also passed a S-CHIP bill, which is funded at $35 billion but does not include any Medicare provisions. These two bills will be going to a Conference Committee where a final agreement much be reached and then passed by Congress before it goes to the President for signature. There is a possibility of a presidential veto. Look in next month’s Messenger for an update.
STFM Leadership Nominations Sought
The leadership of your Society is critical to STFM’s future and to that of academic family medicine. Each year, the Nominations Committee presents a slate of candidates for the officers who will lead STFM. The committee needs and welcomes your assistance, as a function of our member-driven organization, in identifying nominees for Board positions. The candidates’ position statements will be published in the STFM Messenger, and the elections will be held during the STFM Annual Spring Conference, when candidates give brief presentations highlighting their views of the Society’s future.
At the 2008 annual meeting, members will vote for the offices of President-elect (3-year term), Secretary-Treasurer (2-year term), and Member-at-Large (3-year term).
The Nominations Committee includes Mark Quirk, EdD, chair; Elizabeth Garrett, MD, MSPH, and Valerie Gilchrist, MD.
If you are interested in serving on the STFM Board of Directors, don’t be shy! Please consider nominating yourself. Submit suggestions to Roger Sherwood, CAE, at STFM, 800-274-2237, ext. 5400, sherwood@stfm.org.
The Four Cs of the Clerkship Coordinator: Roles, Responsibilities, and Advice From the Trenches
First impressions can last a lifetime or at least through 4 years of medical school. Many times, a student’s first impression of family medicine is formed from their interaction with the clerkship coordinator. The coordinator is the face of family medicine. It is one of the toughest jobs because of the many roles one must play. These are just a few, but I consider them the top four Cs for any clerkship coordinator.
Counselor and Confidant
Medical students become suspicious by nature. It has been ingrained in them that everyone is evaluating or monitoring their behavior. This is often true. While it’s good training for their career, students still need a safe haven. It is important to know the students and to call them by their first name. They often feel like a number in the blur of rotations during their third year. A student can feel comfortable voicing his/her opinion to the coordinator, without fear of retribution or a poor evaluation. They will often relay feelings of stress or ask advice on dealing with a preceptor. These casual conversations will often reveal a student interested in family medicine. It is the coordinator’s role to refer that student to an appropriate mentor.
Customer Service
Coordinators are responsible for representing the family medicine department in a way that is well organized, well prepared, and responsive. The customers that they serve are both the physician preceptors and the students. Understanding the scope of responsibilities that preceptors manage will help coordinators develop realistic timelines and work more efficiently with their preceptors. Communicate regularly with preceptors through phone calls, short e-mail updates, or periodic newsletters. Additionally, the ability to anticipate student needs and address them proactively will save time and reduce student frustration. The less students have to worry about the logistics of a clerkship, the more they will enjoy learning about the many facets of family medicine. Develop a clerkship Web site with the syllabus, site information, and frequently asked questions (FAQs). Send this link to students prior to the start of the clerkship, and refer to the site when a question comes up during the rotation. This is a simple way to relay the clerkship expectations and provide information that is available 24 hours a day. It can also be helpful to walk in your student’s shoes. Follow the directions you give to each site and time the commute. Did you get lost? Are there landmarks that would be helpful in finding the clinic?
Change Agent
Coordinators must also be innovators. Student expectations change from year to year. Educational requirements continue to evolve, so too must the way clerkships are organized and run. Coordinators are well positioned to lead institutional educational quality improvement initiatives with a unique perspective between faculty and student groups. It is often the coordinator’s job to implement change, whether introducing a new evaluation tool or collaborating with preceptors to accommodate a revised student schedule. Coordinators often have first-hand knowledge of what does and does not work. It can be helpful to share this feedback with the clerkship director with suggestions for improved ways of doing things.
Final Advice
It is important for the clerkship coordinator to get outside of the office and gain an understanding of how the whole system works. Attend faculty meetings and stay abreast of changes and institutional issues. This allows for better preparation for potential effects on the clerkship. For schools with distributed community preceptors, make visits to each site. Get to know the coordinators, staff, nurses, and physicians at each site.
It is a challenge to coordinate a clerkship, but it is never boring. It is simply a matter of understanding all the components and getting the routine down. Whether it is a 3-, 4-, or 6-week clerkship, it is the same routine every rotation. There are recurring deadlines for orientation, mid-rotation evaluations, didactics, and the final exam. Managing all of these roles and making an extra effort in certain areas can make the difference between just another clerkship experience for the students and a great experience that might just spark their interest in a career in family medicine.
Top 10 Downloaded Resources on FMDRL
Below are the top 10 resources downloaded from STFM’s Family Medicine Digital Resources Library from 6-25-07 through 7-25-07.
Graduate Medical Education Legislative Efforts
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published, on May 11, a final rule regarding long-term care hospitals, which contained graduate medical education (GME) provisions affecting training in nonhospital sites. As you know, this regulation contained a new definition for “all or substantially all.” Instead of 100% of the costs of training in the nonhospital setting, CMS will now allow “substantially all” to be met by reaching a threshold of 90%.
We made every effort to try to bring that threshold definition down to 75%. This would be in keeping with the use of the term substantially all in another portion of the Medicare statute (the Stark rule) and would have the benefit of helping most if not all of the family medicine residency programs meet the criteria and not have to pay nonhospital preceptors.
The Ways and Means Committee staff were supportive (new leadership makes a difference!), but the budget estimate or score we received from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), was more than $1 billion over 5 years. This was just too steep for them to include it in the bill, as they would have to find offsets. We further pursued this issue with explanations for Ways and Means staff to take to CBO to get them to come to another conclusion regarding the cost of the provision. (It is unusual for CBO to speak with outside groups, so we were lucky that Ways and Means staff were willing to pursue this.) Unfortunately, however, the new score, while lower than the initial one (now $800 million), was still too high for the Committee to include it in the draft children’s health bill (H.R. 3162, The Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 (CHAMP.)
We are considering the possibility of an amendment, but we need to assess the viability of such an idea first. We would need a sponsor and offsets for the amendment equaling $800 million.
The FY2008 Labor-Health and Human Services (HHS) Appropriations bill, H.R. 3043, passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 276-140 on July 19. Title VII Health Professions were allocated $228.2 million, and, as projected, Section 747 of the Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry Cluster was level-funded at $48.8 million. The FY08 Appropriations bill is $5 billion above the President’s budget request; therefore the President has threatened to veto the bill. Health professions training grants are briefly highlighted in a statement from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB stated that these and other HHS programs “have not been proven to be effective, have already achieved their intended purpose, or are duplicative of other activities.”
The Senate has yet to schedule floor time for its bill.
Many of you are aware of problems that have arisen with the release of National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research and Service Awards (NRSA) for FY07. The new NIH reauthorization that was passed last session of Congress inadvertently left out the pass-through from NIH of the 1% NRSA awards to both the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). HRSA, AHRQ, and NIH have all been aware of this problem for some time and have been working hard to find a solution. The NIH has been able to have language put in the FY08 Labor/HHS appropriations bill (**see below) that would solve the problem for next year. The main sticking point is the current, or FY07, grants that are under the auspices of the Joint or continuing resolution.
You may have heard that AHRQ received their funding early in July but that the HRSA programs have not to date (July 25). This is an artifact of the way AHRQ was established. Its authorization has language in it regarding pass through of funds from NIH. The HRSA authorization of this program does not have such language.
I have been in contact with HRSA as well as several other interested specialty groups, including the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), who have been working this issue. It was clear that all parties are working toward a solution. HRSA staff told me they are meeting daily on this and felt it will be resolved shortly. It was basically a question of finding a way to accomplish this—not a question of finding the will to solve the problem.
The good news is that HRSA has finally now found a way to authorize the release of the NIH NRSA funds. As of today, HRSA stated “HRSA's authority has been reinstated and now we are completing some accounting procedures. HRSA is now in a position to issue the awards, and we are working hard to do so. An earlier note was sent to grantees when the outlook was less bright. Please note that only the official notice can commit federal funds."
**Here is the legislative language currently in the Senate FY08 Labor/HHS Appropriation's bill:
SEC. 224. Of the amounts made available in this Act for the National Institutes of Health, 1% of the amount made available for National Research Service Awards (NRSA) shall be made available to the Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to make NRSA awards for research in primary medical care to individuals affiliated with entities who have received grants or contracts under section 747 of the Public Health Service Act, and 1% of the amount made available for NRSA shall be made available to the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to make NRSA awards for health service research.
Smiles for Life Releases Final Module
The STFM Group on Oral Health is pleased to announce the release of the sixth and final module of the award-winning Smiles for Life: a National Oral Health Curriculum for Family Medicine. Module 6 addresses physician application of topical fluoride varnish in children at moderate to high risk of Early Childhood Caries. This technique is now being reimbursed by insurers in 15 states, with many more expected to come on board in the next year.
Smiles for Life was first released in October 2005 and provides a comprehensive oral health curriculum for residencies and medical schools. Its six annotated PowerPoint modules are designed to be easily implemented and allows family medicine residency programs to meet the Residency Review Committee requirement for oral health education. An implementation guide, test questions, resources for further learning, patient education posters in both English and Spanish, pocket cards, and PDA applications are also available. Smiles for Life has become the most popular resource on the Family Medicine Digital Resources Library, and curricular components have been downloaded more than 16,000 times.
All Smiles for Life Resources may be downloaded for free from the Group’s Web site at www.stfm.org/oralhealth. For further information, contact the Group Cochairs Alan Douglass, MD at adouglass@midhosp.org or Russell Maier, MD at rmaier@u.washington.edu.
This feature of the STFM Messenger is sponsored by the Group on Faculty Development. If you have a submission that will teach us something about embracing the knowledge and skills of our colleagues as educators in 400 words, send it as a Microsoft Word attachment along with your name and contact information to Faculty Development Ideas Feature Editor Deborah Simpson, PhD, at the Medical College of Wisconsin, dsimpson@mcw.edu.
Faculty Development for the Developers—Doubling the Impact
Faculty development comes in many shapes, sizes, and responsibilities. One area challenging many of us is peer review of teaching. This column will describe the process used at Mercer University School of Medicine (MUSM) resulting in the design and implementation of a successful peer review system and the development of the system’s authors as scholars.
Background and Need
MUSM’s M1-2 curriculum is organized largely by organ system and divided into phases that average 6 weeks in length. We use a problem-based, small-group discussion format for the learning of pathology and basic medical sciences during each phase. Each small group consists of seven students and a faculty facilitator or "tutor” who may tutor up to four phases each year. The medical science backgrounds of the tutors vary, as does their expertise in teaching and problem-based learning. Over the years, tutors had actively requested that attention be given to evaluation and development of facilitation skills in the tutorial setting. In collaboration with leadership at the institution, a Tutor Development Team (TDT) was established. Members of the team were respected tutors representing basic sciences, internal medicine, pathology, family medicine, and psychiatry. We met over a 1-year period to plan the tutor development and peer review system, with the full support of our dean to implement changes.
What Is Effective Small-group Tutoring?
Our first charge was to define what we meant by effective tutoring. Part of our information gathering included a survey of our preclinical students on what they felt were characteristics of good tutors and what were the negative qualities. We decided to use a framework based on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies to develop the “Being an Effective Tutor” guide. We also prepared sections on Tutoring Tips, Group Process, Challenging Scenarios, and FAQs.
Sharing Our Work—Locally and Nationally
At the time we completed our tutor guide, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) was soliciting contributions to MedEdPORTAL. We submitted our guide for peer review, and it was accepted for dissemination.1 Each member of our TDT felt pride and accomplishment and they had a citation for their CVs. Now, we were ready to move to the next phase of our tutor development project and with our MedEdPORTAL success, we also paid more attention to how what we were doing could contribute to educational scholarship.
Building on Success—Development of Peer Reviewers and Peer Review of Teaching
The TDT conducted workshops to share and review our guide with all tutors. Every new faculty member received a copy of the guidelines during new faculty orientation. The tutor guide and its dissemination laid the groundwork for the next step—a particularly challenging process—peer review of the tutors. Our guiding principle was that peer review be a formative experience for the tutors. We had two goals: (1) to help tutors identify their strengths and areas to work on to improve their tutoring skills and (2) to provide feedback for tutors to use when they prepare their applications for faculty advancement.
Peer review of teaching is resource intensive and exceeded the capacity of our team members. Therefore, we recruited and trained additional experienced tutors to serve as peer reviewers. Training sessions included an orientation to an interaction analysis process for reviewers to use in observing and providing feedback to tutors. We emphasized that peer reviewers were not to participate in the group process, observe two sessions during the tutorial, provide immediate feedback after each observation, and send a written observation summary that would only be seen by the tutor. During the 2006–2007 academic year, approximately 60 tutors participated in the peer-review process.
The tutors, reviewers, and TDT were developed through participation in the peer-review program. The tutors learned via the feedback received from reviewers. The reviewers learned techniques during their observations that they could apply during their next tutorial assignment. And our TDT learned that we should consider our teamwork as an opportunity for scholarship. We have begun to summarize our feedback and prepare our materials (eg, the forms, process, and outcomes) for submission to MedEdPORTAL and Family Medicine Digital Resources Library (FMDRL). Indeed, the act of reviewing our process and materials has resulted in additional development for the TDT as we now recognize that our process mirrors the stages of Kotter’s model2 for institutional change. A need was established, a guiding coalition was organized, we had a vision, we communicated the vision, and we evaluated our work. The tutor guide and peer-review process are now anchored in our culture. Our next step will be to share the results and our new change model with faculty as we kick off our next academic year.
References
1. www.aamc.org/mededportal.
2. Kotter JP. Leading change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996.
New Books Added To STFM Bookstore
A FUTURE FAMILY DOCS SUCCESS STORY
Mentors often serve as safe havens during stormy times—whether supporting individual students or representing the discipline as a whole in a larger group. This month’s mentoring story installment describes the importance of that safe haven role to a third-year medical student. Resources to help you serve as a safe haven mentor can be found at futurefamilydocs.org. Please submit your mentoring success story to Teresa Kulie, MD, University of Wisconsin, teresa.kulie@fammed.wisc.edu.
Mentoring Success Story—Jill Omori, MD
By some serendipitous grace I met my family medicine mentor, Jill Omori, MD, my first day of medical school. Since then, she has been intrinsic in bringing to life my idealistic and lofty dreams of making the world a better place through medicine. Heroic in effort yet humble in heart, she is also changing worlds in our school and community: as an unyielding advocate for expanding the educational curriculum, she is helping to grow a generation of more caring, empathetic, and socially aware physicians; as a community clinician, she helps to heal the lives of our most needy.
There is a notion among some of my fellow students and staff at my medical school that the choice to become a family doctor is a default for those not good enough for other fields. In turn, these judgments are then internalized, exacerbating our second-class status with timid and spiritless answers to the question “What do you want to specialize in?” with qualifiers about sub-specialties or recoiling from the question entirely. However, Dr Omori is so universally adored and respected that she elevates the perception of family medicine. She has made it easier for me to stand and say with pride and conviction, “I want to be a family doctor.”
Medical school can be an intense, overwhelming journey, when all we know about ourselves gets buried under the textbooks, lectures, and notorious socialization process. Not only has Dr Omori provided an anchor for me in the worst of these times, her encouraging nature and unwavering belief in me to do good in this world has helped me recognize and nurture my own unique capabilities. Her support makes me feel brave, and what higher accomplishment can be said of teachers than that they bestow students with the courage to seek their dreams?
Residencies Present Residents With STFM Resident Teacher Awards
STFM would like to congratulate the 292 individuals who received STFM Resident Teacher Awards in 2007 through their residency programs.
The STFM Resident Teacher Award is available to family medicine residencies to give to a third-year resident who has (where applicable): demonstrated skills in teaching/precepting medical students, demonstrated excellence in teaching physician assistants, nursing students, pharmacy students, etc, participated in patient education or residency education committee, contributed to peer teaching, shown quality grand rounds and/or conferences presented, and/or taught in a community setting.
Residencies should consider packaging their Resident Teacher Awards with an STFM membership for the awardee. Click here for membership information.
For more information about this award, visit http://www.stfm.org/awards/res.html.
Special Call for 55-word Submissions—Family Medicine “Lessons From Our Learners” Column
In the March 2007 issue of Family Medicine, Merenstein and colleagues presented 55-word stories on the care of the underserved.1 Scheetz and Fry had offered such a model in their JAMA column2 based on Moss’s book The World’s Shortest Stories.3 The short, short story concept is an intriguing one and has been used in other venues such as the Washington Post’s 100-word limit “LIFE IS SHORT: Autobiography as Haiku.”4
Submissions for this special column must meet the following basic criteria: Relate—preferably in exactly 55 words—a story about an experience (as a student, teacher, physician) that influenced you and/or your practice of medicine. Submissions must be received by December 1, 2007, and will be published in the April 2008 issue of Family Medicine.
To help guide you, please note that the previous paragraph is exactly 55 words, which is the goal. Word count will be determined by the use of MS Word’s word count tool. For inspiration and guidance, please refer to articles in the reference list. Specific format (poetry, unstructured prose, etc) is the choice of the author. For example:
A daughter’s first birthday. Friends, strangers. Odd mix of elation, joy, anger, sadness. A milestone. Great achievement. It comes almost 29 years after her birth. A first year of sobriety. After this experience I will never again address similar struggles in others with a dismissive, “All you need to do is to just stop drinking.”
Send your submissions directly to William Grant, EdD, at grantw@upstate.edu. All submissions must include a cover page with full contact information: name, medical degree(s), name of institution, name of department, mailing address, phone, fax, e-mail.
References
1. Merenstein JH, Wolfe S, Sauerelsen S, Pritchard P, Weaver-Agostoni J, Wilson S, Kant K. 55-word stories and care of the underserved. Fam Med 2007;39(3):169-70.
2. Scheetz A, Fry MD. The stories. JAMA 2000;283:1934.
3. Moss S. The world’s shortest stories. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Publishers, 1998.
4. www.washingtonpost.com. Search on “Autobiography as Haiku.” Last accessed May 2007.
Family Medicine Book Reviews Column—Request for Books and Reviewers
Are you an STFM member who has just published a book pertaining to family medicine? Have you recently produced a DVD, videotape, or Web-based resource ready for distribution? If so, send a copy to Cathy Morrow, MD, book reviews editor, Maine-Dartmouth Family Practice Residency, 4 Sheridan Drive, Fairfield, ME 04937. We will have your book or DVD, etc, reviewed, and the review will be published in the Book Reviews column in Family Medicine.
Also, if you are interested in becoming a book and media reviewer for Family Medicine, contact Dr Morrow, book reviews editor (cmorrow@mainegeneral.org), or Bill Ventres, MD, MA, associate book reviews editor (william.b.ventres@co.multnomah.or.us). Be sure to list your areas of interest.
Deadlines Reminder—Call for Nominations for STFM Awards
October 1, 2007 is the nomination deadline for the following awards: STFM Recognition Award,STFM Excellence in Education Award, STFM Innovative Program Award, STFM Advocate Award, andF. Marian Bishop Award.
November 12, 2007 is the nomination deadline for the following awards: 2008 Curtis G. Hames Research Award in Family Medicine and 2008 Best Research Paper Award.
These leadership, research, and teaching awards will be presented at the 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference, April 30–May 4, in Baltimore, Md. Complete award information, including nomination forms and lists of previous winners, is available at www.stfm.org/awards/awardhub.html.
Do You Have an Open Position to Fill?
STFM’s Fall 2007 Positions and Opportunities (P&O) Book will be distributed via e-mail on September 12, 2007, to all STFM members and Annual Spring Conference non-member registrants. Don’t miss this chance to let family medicine’s key faculty know about your position openings. Thousands of recipients will be able to immediately view and respond to your showcased opportunity from the comfort of their own chair! Click here to see advertising rates and deadlines.
Online Registration Now Available for the Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine
Remind everyone to register for the Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine at www.stfm.org/forum. Hotel room reservations can now be made at the same time! After registering for the Forum, just click on the link to the Hilton Suites/Magnificent Mile Hotel, where you can reserve your room quickly and easily. Don’t forget, the guaranteed rate of $199 deadline is August 27, 2007.
The Forum will be held September 27–30, 2007 at the Hilton Suites Chicago/Magnificent Mile.
The theme this year is “Harnessing the Cascade of Change in Family Medicine: The Critical Role of Behavioral Science.”
Highlights include:
- Three outstanding plenary speakers who will share their insights about the important role of behavioral science in the many changes facing family medicine
- More than 70 workshops, seminars, lecture-discussions and breakfast sessions on current strategies for integrating behavioral science
- Extended Balint training for new faculty and those wanting to update their skills (three Balint experience workshops)
- A full-day clinical track with practical strategies for difficult problems encountered in primary care
- A special session on collaborative care (A Forum at the Forum)
NEW, an interactive poster session - Early bonus sessions—starting at 4 pm on Thursday, September 27, BEFORE the Gathering In reception
Topics for the clinical track on Saturday include dementia, bipolar disorder, antidepressant management, the management of chronic care conditions, responding to community-wide disasters, and care for medically ill, distressed patients.
Forum details are available at www.stfm.org/forum or www.mcw.edu/BehavioralScienceForum. The Forum is sponsored by STFM and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Northeast Region Announces Plans for 2007 Meeting
The 26th annual meeting of the STFM Northeast Region will be held October 18–21 at the Pittsburgh Hilton Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pa. Charles Mackett, III, MD, the chair of the 2007 Host Committee, and a team of faculty drawn from the western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia Family Medicine Residency Programs and the Departments of Family Medicine have worked to plan this year’s meeting.
The conference theme is “Intelligent Redesign—Changing Health Care for a Changing World.” As the nation enters a period of time when health care reform has once again become a major issue, and many states are beginning to experiment with different models of reform, we believe it’s time to reconsider many of the assumptions that are fueling the crisis in health care. Given the complexity and enormous size of health care at local and national levels, we think it’s time for a thoughtful reconsideration of the core elements that underlie both the clinical service delivery and the medical education systems. We believe that family medicine has a contribution to make to health care reform. Through this meeting, we seek to influence the larger conversation within the marketplace, government at all levels, and in academe.
Plenary speakers will include Allen Dobson, MD, who will discuss the redesign of Medicaid systems to improve services for the underserved; Richard Roberts, MD, JD, will discuss worldwide efforts to create health care systems based on family medicine and primary care; and Lou Lukas, MD, will describe an innovative hospital and community partnership to improve care for people with chronic disease.
Special Offerings
- “Integrating Mental Health and Primary Care Services”
- “Caring for People With Chronic Pain and Addiction Issues: A Train-the-Trainers Program”
- “Primary Care and Global Health: A Call to Action”
- “Medical Homes for People With Intellectual and Other Cognitive Disabilities”
- Osteopathic Educators Track: Programming designed by and for osteopathic physicians
- Performance improvement skills for family medicine faculty and residents
Student Scholarships and Residency Fair
Scholarships covering registration fee, meals, and lodging will be available for students from each medical school within our region. We expect an attendance of 225 medical students. As in years past, a Residency Fair will be held during the Friday and Saturday evening dinners.
For more information, contact Laurence Bauer, MSW, MEd, at Laurence.bauer@sbcglobal.net or 937-478-4823 or go to www.fmec.net for registration forms, hotel information, and student scholarship application forms.
2008 Annual Spring Conference in Baltimore: Submit Today!
You already know that the STFM online submission process is simple and straightforward to use, so please follow these easy steps to increase the likelihood that your submission will receive a favorable review. Submission deadline: September 12, 2007.
1. Access the Call for Papers at www.stfm.org/stfmpresenter/submission/start.cfm?confid=149.
2. Read the theme and priority areas to identify sessions you want to submit for the conference.
Theme: "Strengthen Core, Stimulate Progress: Assembling Patient-centered Medical Homes"
Priority areas for the 2008 Annual Spring Conference:
- Transmitting family medicine's core values to students, residents, and patients
- Equipping faculty, residents, and preceptors to manage relationships, information, and processes
- Training students, residents, and faculty to achieve characteristics of the patient-centered medical home: patient-centered care, whole-person orientation, team approach, elimination of barriers to access, information systems, focus on quality, core services.
- Redesigning our departments' and programs' medical practices to achieve characteristics of the patient-centered medical home
3. Read the Call for Papers to note each presentation category's description and identify the requirements for each category in which you wish to submit a proposal. You can even read the new planning guide by Peter Catinella, MD, for specific instructions and helpful hints for preparing a great conference submission! The guide is available online at www.stfm.org/stfmpresenter/cfp/stfmsubmissionguide.pdf.
4. Write each proposal so it includes the information specified for the presentation category (eg, lecture/discussion) using your computer's word processing program.
5. Copy the appropriate parts of your proposal and paste them into the online submission form as required.
6. Submit the proposal with a click of your mouse without paying overnight delivery fees!
Questions about a proposal?
The Program Committee is committed to answering your questions about proposals. Please contact Jim Tysinger, PhD, conference chair, at tysinger@uthscsa.edu or Ray Rosetta at STFM (rrosetta@stfm.org) if you need assistance or have questions or concerns about your submission(s). We look forward to reviewing your submissions for the 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference!
Want to Review Submissions for the 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference?
The Program Committee seeks STFM members to review submissions to the 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference. Volunteers should have some experience submitting proposals to and presenting at STFM meetings.
Selected volunteers will complete some brief training and receive feedback after reviewing three simulated proposals. Reviewers will review around 50 proposals between September 13–October 15. Download the reviewer's guide and application form. Contact Ray Rosetta (rrosetta@stfm.org) or 800-274-2237, ext. 5412) if you have any questions about this opportunity.
Don't miss this opportunity to be part of the peer review process and add this leadership experience to your CV.
The 2008 STFM Annual Spring Conference Call for Papers is now available online at www.stfm.org. The submission deadline is September 12, 2007.
Two 2008 Conference Call for Papers Now Open at www.stfm.org—SUBMIT TODAY!
• Conference on Families and Health—The 2008 Conference on Families and Health will move to New Orleans next year, to be held February 27–March 1, 2008.
• Annual Spring Conference—The 41st STFM Annual Spring Conference will be held April 30–May 4, 2008, in Baltimore, Md.
Family Medicine Residency Applicant Academy—September 16–18, Chicago; and September 23–25, Houston
28th Forum for Behavioral Science in Family Medicine—September 27-30, 2007, Chicago
STFM Northeast Regional Meeting—October 19-21, 2007, Pittsburgh, Pa
NAPCRG Annual Meeting—October 20-23, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia
2007 Annual Conference on Practice Improvement: Health Information and Patient Education—November 8-11, 2007, Newport Beach, Calif
Ohio State University Faculty Development Workshop—December 1, 2007, Columbus, Ohio. Registration opens in mid-August.
Predoctoral Directors Development Institute—January 24, 2008, prior to the 2008 Predoctoral Education Conference in Portland
Predoctoral Directors Development Institute—April 30, 2008, prior to the 2008 Annual Spring Conference in Baltimore
Other Meetings of Note
AAFP Scientific Assembly—October 3–7, 2007, Chicago
AAMC Annual Meeting—November 2—7, 2007, Washington, DC
Academic Family Medicine 2007 Fall Session, in conjunction with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) meeting—November 4, 2007, Washington, DC
AMERSA National Conference—November 8–10, 2007, Washington, DC
Call for Papers—21st Primary Care Research Methods and Statistics Conference—November 30–December 2, 2007, San Antonio, Tex, The Menger Hotel. Conference theme: "Social Epidemiology and Multilevel Effects Research." Plenary speaker: Ichiro Kawachi, PhD, Harvard School of Public Health, "The Search for Contextual Effects in Social Epidemiology: Challenges and New Directions." Dissection of Innovative Studies Workshop: Russell E. Glasgow, PhD, “Using the RE-AIM Framework to Enhance Effectiveness Research.” For complete information, go to http://familymed.uthscsa.edu.
Submission deadline: August 17, 2007
New Wonca President-Elect
STFM member Richard Roberts, MD, JD, University of Wisconsin, was elected as the new president-elect of the World Organization of Family Doctors (Wonca) at the recent Wonca Conference in Singapore. Dr Roberts will serve as Wonca president for the term 2010-2013. Alain Montegut, MD, Boston University, also an STFM member, was elected president for the North American Region.
New Members
| Alabama | |
| Nancy Blevins, MD | New York |
| Amir Levine, LCSW, CASAC | |
| Arkansas | |
| Martha Lauster | Ohio |
| Patricia Matto, DO | |
| Delaware | |
| Nelson Chen Fernandez, MD | Pennsylvania |
| Berta Granados Ortega, MD | Maisie Hwang, MD |
| Ruta Marfatia, MD | |
| District of Columbia | Laura Miller, MD |
| Ruth Elaine Graves | |
| Tennessee | |
| Florida | Erin Harris, MD |
| Stephanie Peters, MA | Robert Hoover, MD |
| Illinois | Texas |
| Rahmat Na'Allah, MD | Jay Morrow, DVM, MS |
| Nimmi Rajagopal, MD | |
| Mary Beth Sinchai, MD | Wisconsin |
| Charles Shabino, MD | |
| Minnesota | |
| Lisa Capell, MD | |
| Lynn Manning, MD |