Tag Archives: Family Medicine

The Three Services I Want to Provide to My Patients

Lara Baatenburg

Lara Baatenburg

We all have those areas of life where we just feel incredibly out of place and like we are standing like deer in the headlights. For me, this is going to the mechanic. I’m always nervous to bring my car in; what if there is something wrong with my car and I can’t afford it, what if the mechanic tries to pull a fast one on me, what if, what if, what if? I recently had to go to my mechanic, and he proceeded to list all the things wrong with my car. As I stood there nodding my understanding I was really thinking that I had no idea what he was talking about. He was using words I didn’t know, explaining about parts of the car I had never heard of, and the list of my ignorance goes on. Obviously I know nothing about vehicles, but I don’t want him to know that!  When he finished and asked if I had any questions I responded confidently, “Nope, you did a great job of explaining that, thank you,” when really I had no idea what to ask because since I only understood maybe 10% of what I was told, forming any question was difficult.

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Required Faculty Development for Preceptors: It Can Be Done!

Dennis Baker, PhD

Dennis Baker, PhD

In 2001, I took a position as the assistant dean for faculty development at the newly formed Florida State University College of Medicine (FSUCOM) in Tallahassee. I came to FSUCOM with 22 years of faculty development experience, the bulk of that with the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

For 16 years I travelled throughout Ohio giving teaching skills workshops for community preceptors. It was during the late 1980s through the 1990s, when the landscape of medicine was changing and preceptors had less time to teach and to participate in faculty development activities. I often thought about pushing for a faculty development requirement but knew there would be push back from preceptors and the administration.

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Video and Direct Observation Precepting: Time to Remove Our Head From the Sand

Keith Foster, PhD

Keith Foster, PhD

Advances in technology have made direct observation by video recording or live-feed easy and affordable, allowing the most financially limited programs to conduct direct observation this way. It is not surprising, then, that a large number of family medicine residency programs use some form of video recording or live-feed direct observation.

What is surprising is the absence of or only passing reference to the issues of informed consent, patient authorization, and procedural guidelines related to video recording and live-feed precepting in the examining room, particularly in the age of HIPAA.

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