Annals of Family Medicine articles from March 2007

Annals of Family Medicine archives from March 2007

Time to ban direct-to-consumer prescription drug marketing.(Editorial)
March 1, 2007... Key words: Advertising/direct-to-consumer; drug industry; doctor-patient relationship; public health It is time to ban direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs. The current US system of pharmaceutical company...

Myocardial infarction mortality in rural and urban hospitals: rethinking measures of quality of care.(Clinical report)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE Patients with acute myocardial infarction have higher mortality rates in rural hospitals than in urban hospitals, suggesting substandard quality of care in the rural setting. We examined characteristics of patients...

Patient education on prostate cancer screening and involvement in decision making.
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE Many clinicians lack resources to engage patients in shared decision making for prostate cancer screening. We sought to evaluate whether previsit educational decision aids facilitate shared decision making. METHODS...

How physicians approach prostate cancer screening before and after losing a lawsuit.(Clinical report)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE In 2004, a commentary by Merenstein was published in JAMA describing how he was sued for engaging a patient in shared decision making for prostate cancer screening. The article sparked considerable debate on the impact of...

Major depression symptoms in primary care and psychiatric care settings: a cross-sectional analysis.
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE We undertook a study to confirm and extend preliminary findings that participants with major depressive disorder (MDD) in primary care and specialty care settings have with equivalent degrees of depression severity and an...

Practice-based referrals to a tobacco cessation quit line: assessing the impact of comparative feedback vs general reminders.(Clinical report)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE We undertook a study to assess the impact of comparative feedback vs general reminders on practice-based referrals to a tobacco cessation quit line and estimated costs for projected quit responses. METHODS We conducted...

Research productivity among recipients of AAFP Foundation grants.(American Academy of Family Physicians)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE This study examines research productivity generated by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) Foundation and the AAFP Joint Grant Awards Program (JGAP) based upon projects funded during the period 1990 through...

Treating opioid addiction with buprenorphine-naloxone in community-based primary care settings.(Clinical report)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE Office-based treatment of opioid addiction with a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone was approved in 2002. Efficacy of this treatment in nonresearch clinical settings has not been studied. We examined the efficacy...

Ratings of physician communication by real and standardized patients.(Clinical report)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT PURPOSE Patient ratings of physician's patient-centered communication are used by various specialty credentialing organizations and managed care organizations as a measure of physician communication skills. We wanted to compare...

Clinical concerns about clinical performance measurement.(REFLECTIONS)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT Performance measurement has become one of the foundations of current efforts to improve health care quality and has successfully increased compliance with practice guidelines in many settings. Despite the successes of performance...

Jazz and the 'art' of medicine: improvisation in the medical encounter.(REFLECTIONS)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT Improvisation is an important aspect of patient-physician communication. It is also a defining feature of jazz music performance. This essay uses examples from jazz to illustrate principles of improvisation that relate to an...

Caring for a surge of hurricane Katrina evacuees in primary care clinics.(REFLECTION)
March 1, 2007... ABSTRACT Primary care physicians are rarely mentioned in medical disaster plans. We describe how a group of mostly family physicians and administrators of the JPS Health Network (JPS) took primary responsibility for 3,700 evacuees of...

On track: intended and unintended consequences of direct-to-consumer drug marketing.(ON TRACK)
March 1, 2007... DTC PHARMACEUTICAL MARKETING The study by Frosch and colleagues (1) and the accompanying editorial by Kessler and Levy (2) in the last issue of Annals stimulated a bevy of insightful comments and debate. Commenting on the editorial, Allen...

Corrections.(Correction notice)
March 1, 2007... In the article by Frosch et al, "Creating Demand for Prescription Drugs: a Content Analysis of Television Direct-To-Consumer Advertising" (Ann Fam Med. 2007;5[1]:6-13), some authors were given incorrect affiliations. The following author list...

AAFP supports improvement, not ban, on direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads.(Family Medicine Updates)(American Academy of Family Physicians)
March 1, 2007... The media were abuzz in recent months about a study on direct-to-consumer advertising that appeared in the January/February 2007 issue of Annals of Family Medicine. The study, "Creating Demand for Prescription Drugs: A Content Analysis of...

Maintenance of certification update.(Family Medicine Updates)
March 1, 2007... The ABFM is pleased to announce as of December 31, 2006, over 9,000 of the Diplomates who certified or recertified in 2003 successfully met the deadline of completing their Stage 1 requirements for Maintenance of Certification for Family...

STFM launches its Future Family Docs campaign--the society's premedical school recruitment plan.(Family Medicine Updates)(Society of Teachers of Family Medicine)
March 1, 2007... STFM is proud to announce the official launch of Future Family Docs, a campaign designed to inspire and support outreach activities by our STFM members to premedical students to promote careers in family medicine. The campaign is organized in 3...

The AAMC Academic Chronic care collaborative: family medicine's participation and lessons learned.(Family Medicine Updates)(The Association of American Medical Colleges)
March 1, 2007... Beginning in June 2005, a cohort of 48 teams assembled to participate in the first chronic care collaborative that enrolled teams only from the nation's teaching hospitals. The Academic Chronic Care Collaborative (ACCC), formed through a...

Maternity care in family medicine: a time for dialogue.(Family Medicine Updates)
March 1, 2007... Maternity care is a core tenet of family medicine, and has been reaffirmed in the Future of Family Medicine report. Although there is wide regional variation in training experience, family medicine residency can prepare residents for competency...

A guided tour of community-based participatory research: an annotated bibliography.(Family Medicine Updates)(Bibliography)
March 1, 2007... It seems inherently improbable that an academic researcher can ask and answer a clinical question that matters to a patient. The US health care system is in disarray. Our medical research juggernaut is assaulted on all sides by concerns...

In this issue: real change is real hard in the real world.(Editorial)
March 1, 2007... This issue of Annals is devoted to original research, methodology, theory, and essay that show how difficult it is to improve practice in the real world. Rather than seeing the complexity of making positive change as a source of discouragement,...