BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Despite inclusion of Balint training in US family medicine residency programs, little research exists about the effectiveness of this training in improving residents' behavioral medicine skills. This study compared the outcomes for residents who did and did not undergo Balint training to increase residents' psychological medicine skills in two rural training programs. ...

F physicians often feel devalued in our complex and “specialized” world. Specialization and subspecialization are highly valued; generalism is discounted. Family doctors are not alone in feeling disparaged; other generalists, such as general internists, general pediatricians, and general surgeons, sometimes feel this way too. Our colleagues in the traditional specialties also experience put-dow...

Providing oral health care to rural populations in the United States is a major challenge. Lack of community water fluoridation, dental workforce shortages, and geographical barriers all aggravate oral health and access problems in the largely rural Northwest. Children from low-income and minority families and children with special needs are at particular risk. Family-centered disease preventio...

BACKGROUND Lithuanian primary health care (PHC) is undergoing changes from the systems prevalent under the Soviet Union, which ensured free access to specialised health care. Currently four different PHC models work in parallel, which offers the opportunity to study their respective effect on referral rates. Our aim was to investigate whether there were differences in referrals rates from diffe...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Family medicine obstetrics and maternal-child health fellowships offer family physicians additional training in pregnancy care. Our objectives were to assess the content of these fellowship programs, the clinical practices of fellowship graduates, and factors associated with inclusion of cesarean delivery in practice after fellowship training. METHODS A survey was se...