2005 National Conference Registration Up

Total registration at the 2005 National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students topped last year's total by about 240.

Registrants at the conference included 485 residents; 637 medical students; and 1,429 exhibitors, many of them residents. Others attending the meeting included guests, other AAFP members, Academy and chapter staff and speakers. The total attendance for 2005 was 2,872, compared with 2,631 for last year.

A few large student groups attended the meeting, with the largest being 18 students from the University of Illinois College of Medicine-Rockford. The college's family and community medicine residency paid the students' way as part of recruitment efforts for the specialty.

"Our goal is to promote family medicine and help maintain interest in it among our students," said residency director Farion Williams, M.D. "The students really enjoyed taking classes and workshops like the musculoskeletal workshop. And they liked meeting students from other schools interested in family medicine and having the opportunity to find out more about residencies."

It's a strategy that works, said AAFP Board Chair Michael Fleming, M.D., of Shreveport, La. According to Fleming, perhaps 80 percent of students who attend the annual conference go into family medicine.

The second largest student group at the meeting, numbering 17, came from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis.