 December 2002 • Volume 8 • Number 12 |
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In this interview, AAFP President James Martin, M.D., of San Antonio shares his interests and hopes. He focuses on the Future of Family Medicine project, political advocacy and student interest in the specialty.
You chair the leadership committee for the Future of Family Medicine project. What's the project all about?
It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform and renew our specialty.
We've commissioned focus groups and more than 1,000 interviews to get input on the role of the family doctor today, what we need to do differently to meet people's needs and how our education needs to change.
What did the focus groups say?
Here's a few things our focus groups taught us:
Family physicians are confident about their own contributions to patients' lives, but they're worried that the institutional value of the specialty hasn't been well established or marketed.
Most subspecialists believe in the importance of family practice.
What did the interviews show?
Here's some early analysis from the interviews with family physicians, patients and others:
What do family physicians want changed? Reimbursement, public opinion about the specialty, managed care, paperwork and having insurance companies dictate policies and procedures.
The greatest sources of satisfaction to family doctors are making a difference in people's lives, bonding with their patients and seeing a variety of patients. No day is ever the same as the one before.
In the early 1960s, Americans said they wanted a personal physician. What they wanted, we've become.
By next fall, the project should develop major proposals about our specialty.
How can AAFP members plug into the Future of Family Medicine project?
They should go to our Web site: http://www.futurefamilymed.org. Project task forces are studying topics like education, systems of care and communicating the FP's role. This spring, the task forces will begin posting their reports online. We need Academy members to comment on the reports.
Is there any connection between the project and your interest in legislation?
Well, the interviews showed that patients have high regard for their family physicians. The company analyzing the interview results can't believe we're not using that high regard in legislative efforts. The company told us, "Your humility is messing you up."
As the project's data analysis unfolds and as the Board of Directors examines options this fall for expanding AAFP's political power, we'll begin to tap patients' interest in matters that affect their own health care.
How do you see patients becoming involved in advocacy?
We might have flyers in our reception areas saying, "Ask your family doctor about legislation that will make a difference in your health care." We want to harness the clout of about 100 million voters we care for.
It will be important to identify strategies that work at the state level, then move to the national. The Texas AFP has had some God-blessed successes. In the mid-1990s, the legislature told the medical schools to identify and admit students more likely to seek primary care and rural practice. We know that when we have older, more mature kids from rural areas, they'll go back to the rural areas to practice. But we needed the legislature's push to start getting the right raw material into the medical schools to begin with.
What do you do in San Antonio to turn kids on to family practice?
We've asked high school counselors to identify kids with ability. We bring them to our residency clinic, put them in white coats, have them shadow us. We let them know scholarships are available to help them through the seven or eight years after college. To most of the public, especially the underserved, being a family doctor is still the golden apple. We've got to put it within reach.
FP Report is published by the
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Copyright © 2002 by
American Academy of Family Physicians.