PURPOSE Linkages between general medical practices and external services are important for high quality chronic disease care. The purpose of this research is to describe the development, evaluation and use of a brief tool that measures the comprehensiveness and quality of a general practice's linkages with external providers for the management of patients with chronic disease. In this study, cl...

Family Practice encourages the submission and publications of qualitative studies in family practice. These studies provide invaluable information and insights regarding the processes, salience, accessibility, appropriateness and satisfaction of family practice.1 Such studies provide information superior to randomized control trials for these dimensions. RCTs in turn provide superior informatio...

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between the organizational model and diabetes processes of care. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We used data from the Translating Research into Action for Diabetes (TRIAD), a multicenter study of diabetes care in managed care, including 8354 patients with diabetes. We identified five model types: for-profit group/network, for-profit independent practice assoc...

TBARS and BDNF levels in newborns exposed to crack/ cocaine during pregnancy: a comparative study Victor Mardini, Luis A. Rohde, Keila M. Ceresér, Carolina M. Gubert, Emily G. da Silva, Fernando Xavier, Rodrigo Parcianello, Liane M. Röhsig, Flávio Pechansky, Claudia M. Szobot Serviço de Psiquiatria da Infância e Adolescência (SPIA), Hospital de Clı́nicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), Porto Alegre, RS,...

Two very different articles in this issue deal with the same important subject: workflow redesign. It’s a topic that is at the same time important and often slighted, largely because workflow – the way we do what we do day after day – tends to become such a well-traveled route that we may forget that other ways may lead us to the same end more quickly and efficiently. When workflow issues do ...

OBJECTIVE Germany is witnessing an increasing shortage of general practitioners (GPs). The aim was to determine predictors of the job-related motivation of medical students of three medical faculties with different institutionalisation of general practice as an academic discipline. METHODS Medical students were surveyed with a standardised questionnaire about their attitudes towards general p...

OBJECTIVE To describe the development and validation of a test of knowledge and skills in evidence based medicine. DESIGN Cross sectional study. SETTING Family practice residency programme in California; a list server for those who teach evidence based medicine; and an evidence based medicine seminar series. PARTICIPANTS Family practice residents and faculty members (n=43); volunteers sel...

BACKGROUND General practice based registration networks (GPRNs) provide information on morbidity rates in the population. Morbidity rate estimates from different GPRNs, however, reveal considerable, unexplained differences. We studied the range and variation in morbidity estimates, as well as the extent to which the differences in morbidity rates between general practices and networks change if...

Quality service provision and patient safety and satisfaction in encounters with health-care professionals relies on effective communication between the practitioner and patient. This study aimed to identify effective practices for improving communication between clinical staff in general practice and patients with limited English proficiency, and to promote their implementation in general prac...

OBJECTIVE The central strategy for effective gout management is longterm urate-lowering therapy to maintain the serum urate at a level below 0.36 mmol/l. We sought to determine the prevalence of gout and the quality of care in a national Australian general practice population. METHODS Data were from general practice point-of-care electronic records over a 5-year period (n = 1,479,449). Inform...