Imagine Family Doctor

ER, the long-running TV drama that raised the profile of emergency physicians, aired its final episode last night. Its introduction in 1994 made many family physicians long for the return of Marcus Welby, MD, the show that popularized family medicine during its prime-time run from 1969 to 1976. As far as we know, there’s no family medicine TV drama in the making, but we do want to point out a new release that you might have missed this week -- Imagine Family Doctor, the video game.

Developed for the Nintendo DS gaming system, Imagine Family Doctor invites young gamers (despite the “Mild Blood” warning, it’s rated E for Everyone) to play as Abbie, a young doctor opening her first medical office in a new city. According to the game site, here’s what they’re up against as they try to “Become the favorite doctor in town!”:

• Be the Town’s Doctor – Meet and care for patients as you learn about their symptoms and medical history. Diagnose patients, and give healing advice and prescriptions.
• Learn New Medical Skills – Learn new techniques from other doctors and receive advice that will help you practice. (Use your stylus to apply casts!)
• Solve the Mystery – Discover and defeat a mysterious virus that is plaguing the town.
• Create and Customize Your Office – Design a welcoming office for your patients to feel comfortable in. Choose the color palette and furniture layout that fit your style.
• Make Friends in This New Town – Interact with a number of different characters like the funny shopkeeper, the clumsy actor, and the Zen Doctor.

If only being a real family doc were this easy. (Where’s the “Get Paid” portion of the game, anyway?) Then again, given the recent match numbers, maybe this is just what the the specialty needs.

Posted at 10:19AM Apr 03, 2009 by Leigh Ann Backer  |  Comments[0]

The 2009 Match results are in, and they're not good

Countless studies have demonstrated that a strong primary care workforce is essential to a high-quality, cost-effective health care system. But the latest Match numbers are out of step with that premise. Instead, they show a disappointing dip in the number of students choosing family medicine.

The number of positions filled by family medicine residency programs decreased 3.2 percent this year to 2,329 positions, according to preliminary information from the 2009 National Resident Matching Program. The number of family medicine positions filled by U.S. seniors decreased 7.4 percent, to 1,083 positions.

AAFP President Ted Epperly, MD, had this to say: "This decline has nothing to do with the value of primary care and everything to do with a system that claims to support primary care but fails to actually act on its pronouncements."

He added, "Research has demonstrated unequivocally that the world’s successful health care systems depend on primary care. With a ratio of 70 percent subspecialists to 30 percent primary care physicians, the American health care system is upside down. No health care reform can succeed unless we bring both financial and actual access to the primary care physicians that provide more than 80 percent of all health care services Americans need."

A 2006 AAFP workforce report indicated the United States would need 139,531 family physicians by 2020, which means it must graduate 4,439 family physicians each year. "In our current environment, the nation is attracting only half the number of future family physicians that we will need," said Epperly.

Here's how several other specialties fared in the Match:

• Internal medicine-primary filled 18 fewer positions (-7.6%),
• Pediatrics-primary filled one more position (1.3%),
• Internal medicine-pediatrics filled 13 more positions (3.7%),
• Anesthesiology filled 44 more positions (6.1%),
• Diagnostic radiology filled six fewer positions (-4.0%),
• Emergency medicine filled 89 more positions (6.1%),
• Obstetrics-gynecology filled 28 more positions (2.4%).

Posted at 03:15PM Mar 25, 2009 by Brandi White  |  Comments[0]