Family Medicine Research

[herewego]

As a prospective FM resident, what extracurricular would you include throughout med school to strengthen ones application (ie. research, international work, local volunteering, etc.). I know that FM is by no means competitive but I am just curious if there is one thing that "stands out".

[Real Beef]

Pass your exams, do well in your electives, join your schools Family medicine interest group. You dont need to stand out or go above the call of duty to do stuff like international volunteering. If you've been accepted to med school and want family medicine you no longer have to be a keener .... relax, you've made it, go on auto-pilot.

 

Since family med is so diverse you may want to do some observorships with family physicians in a multitude of practice settings just to see which ones you like and dont like. I have been shadowing rural family docs this summer and they all say how they would SO hate to do urban office family medicine ... so boring they say. While the rural docs do emerg, clinics, long term care, home visits, scopes, minor surgeries, etc.

[herewego]

I have also heard from numerous doctors that the time of GPs is slowly fading out... he is a disgruntled doctor who hates his practice so I took it with a grain of salt, but was really confused by his statement. Did he mean that Nurse Practitioners will soon take over?

[Real Beef]

I have also heard from numerous doctors that the time of GPs is slowly fading out... he is a disgruntled doctor who hates his practice so I took it with a grain of salt, but was really confused by his statement. Did he mean that Nurse Practitioners will soon take over?

 

Who knows could be a few things. Certainly there are no more general practitioners anymore since they abolished the rotating internship ... so is he referring to the fact that fewer and fewer docs left with only an internship? Probably thats not what he meant ...

 

.... probably refering to the encroachment phenomenon ... with NPs, pharamcists and even RNs, NDs in some provinces being able to prescribe/refill and NPs being able to diagnose. As well many allied health professionals are starting to be able to order labs ... even my former profession, RDs, are starting to be able to order some limited lab work (maybe its just on the way ... havent been really kept up with it). So certainly many primary care/family physician scope of practice has been overlapped by other professionals in the periphery who have been excited and happy to do some low level stuff. I think the higher acuity cases will be in the realm of medicine, the lower-easier stuff may be eaten away as time goes on especially if physicians are happy to let it go. RNs, NPs and the such just dont have the training to deal with most of the higher acuity stuff it is not something that will be lost. So urban office family medicine may be more at risk than some of the other practice areas that I spoke about ... which also tend to be done in more rural areas where scope of practice is much wider.

 

I have worked with alot of allied health professionals many seem very unsure of their new skills and scopes of practice often referring to MDs even though they have new powers to deal with it themselves. I know for certain things I am fine going to an NP but once that reaches a certain threshold of acuity, complexity I will only see an MD.