Medical assistants (MAs) have always been vital to the effective operation of our primary care clinic. Each physician in our university-based, hospital-run clinic has an assigned MA, and a good MA can make a clinic day run smoothly. One who is not efficient or does not understand the physician’s work process, however, can slow down the whole clinic and make a workday very frustrating. Surprisin...

Rapid HIV testing was approved in Australia in December 2012. Data was collected to describe the early experience of using rapid testing in Australia but as the information was collected, the authors noted that there appeared to be a high rate of HIV diagnoses amongst rapid testers. Further analysis confirmed this impression, when the rate was compared to a baseline rate of HIV diagnoses over t...

Background: Social issues have prominent effects on the peoples' physical and mental health and on the health risk factors. In Iran, many organizations provide social care services to their target population. This study aimed to explore the roles and functions of Primary Health Care (PHC) system in providing social care services in Iran.   Methods: This was a qualitative study, for whic...