This study sought to determine the academic and professional outcomes of medical school graduates who failed the United States Licensing Examination Step 1 on the first attempt. This retrospective cohort study was based on pooled data from 2,003 graduates of six Midwestern medical schools in the classes of 1997-2002. Demographic, academic, and career characteristics of graduates who failed Step...

BACKGROUND Patient-provider relationships in primary care are characterized by greater continuity and depth than in non-primary care specialties. We hypothesized that relationship styles of medical students based on attachment theory are associated with specialty choice factors and that such factors will mediate the association between relationship style and ultimately matching in a primary car...

Where do radiologists rank among medical specialties with regard to happiness? Toward the top, ahead of family physicians, general internists, and other primary care physicians who spend a high proportion of their time dealing with chronic diseases? Toward the middle of the pack, along with general surgeons and surgical specialists, who tend to work long hours? Or toward the bottom of the pecki...

BACKGROUND Students' selection of a specialty is an important decision in their career as a physician. While distinguishing primary care physicians from non-primary care specialists has served a purpose for how medicine is practiced and managed, considering alternative ways of grouping specialties is appropriate when exploring specialty decisions. PURPOSE This study explored how early special...

Providing a medical home for a child or adolescent and his or her family means establishing a longitudinal relationship between the primary care clinician (PCC) and the family. PCC's, by implementing routine screening and surveillance, have the opportunity at every encounter with the family to promote healthy development-motor, language, cognitive, and social-emotional.

Krista W. Bowers, MD, Michaela Robertson, MS, and Michael L. Parchman, MD, MPH W are in the third year of a study to improve diabetes care in 40 small primary care clinics. Practice facilitators are working closely with the physicians and staff in these clinics to implement the chronic care model (CCM), a forerunner of the patient-centered medical home. One dominant theme that has emerged fr...

1 1Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 2National Institute for Health Research School for Primary Care Research, Oxford, UK 3APEx Collaboration for Academic Primary Care, Institute for Health Services Research, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK 4Department of Health Sciences, University of York, UK 5Centre for...

OBJECTIVES We fielded a population-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) in rural western Tanzania, where only one third of women deliver children in a health facility, to evaluate health-system factors that influence women's delivery decisions. METHODS Women were shown choice cards that described 2 hypothetical health centers by means of 6 attributes (distance, cost, type of provider, attit...

AIM To examine the current physician supply in western countries, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. To assess the current management of physician resources in these regions and the potential for their future management. METHODS Description and analysis of current physician to population ratios, graduating physician to populati...