brand logo

Am Fam Physician. 2003;67(3):445

AFP depends on your feedback to help us understand your needs as readers. We collect your thoughts and ideas from written surveys, structured focus groups or interviews, casual conversations, e-mails, telephone calls, and letters. We appreciate your comments and find your kind words heart warming, and your loyalty to your patients and specialty inspiring. We also gain some insights each time we look at new data and find things we could do better, like helping you get more out of your journal. Here are a few ways you might get more out of AFP:

  • Make AFP your one-stop journal. Keep in mind that AFP publishes original clinical review articles in addition to highlights from the major research journals and the most authoritative practice guidelines.

  • Look for practical take-home points from AFP's articles. Remember that AFP's original contributed articles have gone through peer review by two family physicians and up to four subspecialty reviewers. Each article is assessed according to standard criteria, and authors are required to respond to reviewer's comments and make appropriate revisions. AFP's articles are written by family physicians for family physicians using the best available resources. Articles now include labels showing the strength of evidence underlying the author's key clinical recommendations, so that physicians and their patients can make informed decisions.

  • Find key evidence-based guidelines in your journal. Look for the following departments: “Clinical Evidence: A Publication of BMJ Publishing,” “Cochrane for Clinicians: Putting Evidence into Practice,” and “U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Recommendations and Rationale.” Find highlights of other important guidelines in “Practice Guidelines.”

  • Target your reading by skimming through the short table of contents on the cover and the expanded table of contents at the front of the issue. Locate “Tips” topics by going to the “Tips” contents page at the beginning of the section. If you want to preview the table of contents before your issue arrives in the mail, sign up to receive AFP's table of contents via e-mail. Just go to AFP online athttps://www.aafp.org/afp and click on the “e-mail alerts” logo. All we need is your e-mail address.

  • Remember that AFP is available online as a resource. Why not go tohttps://www.aafp.org/afp and spend a few minutes getting acquainted with us online? Full text of the journal is available with unlimited access; if you haven't taken advantage of AFP online, you've been missing out on a great opportunity. Find out how easy it is to search AFP by key words to locate topics of interest or an article you've been trying to find.

  • Take advantage of AFP's CME. If you had sent in all of your quiz cards from last year, you would have earned 75 Prescribed credit hours of CME without leaving home. It's still not too late to submit quiz cards for much of last year; credit is accepted for quizzes postmarked up to a year after the issue publication date. Members of the AAFP can submit their answers online and save on the postage.

  • Think about other ways AFP can help you and send us your comments. You can reach us at afpedit@aafp.org.

Continue Reading


More in AFP

Copyright © 2003 by the American Academy of Family Physicians.

This content is owned by the AAFP. A person viewing it online may make one printout of the material and may use that printout only for his or her personal, non-commercial reference. This material may not otherwise be downloaded, copied, printed, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any medium, whether now known or later invented, except as authorized in writing by the AAFP.  See permissions for copyright questions and/or permission requests.