The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) will be taking over Chicago next month for the Annual Scientific Assembly. Activities begin Thursday, October 3, and continue through Saturday, October 6. Thousands of family physicians, residents, and students will be attending lectures, continuing medical education courses, and other presentations. Topics include diabetes, substance abuse, a variety of clinical procedures, practice enhancement, career satisfaction, the role of family medicine in disaster areas, and the use of electronic health records.

Also on the agenda are courses emphasizing the 2008 Annual Clinical Focus on prevention, diagnosis, and management of infectious diseases. Look for “The Prepared Office,” an exhibit showing two waiting rooms, one with pandemic infectious disease precautions and one without those safeguards.

AAFP Publications Exhibit

In the exhibition hall, several hundred exhibitors will be offering information about medical equipment and devices, electronic health records, and other career and patient-oriented resources. At the Academy's Publications Division exhibit (booth numbers 863, 865, and 867), medical and professional editors for American Family Physician (AFP), Family Practice Management (FPM), and Annals of Family Medicine will be available from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily on Thursday, October 4, through Saturday, October 6, to answer any questions you may have about any of the journals. We hope you will stop by with any questions or comments you might have.

This year, we are particularly interested in what you think of AFP's new department, Close-ups: A Patient's Perspective (https://www.aafp.org/afp/2007/0715/p233.html). We will also be giving away flash drives loaded with patient information handouts from AFP to anyone who completes our reader survey. The patient handouts are available as PDFs and will have links to the online AFP articles they were originally published with. The flash drive will also contain coding and documentation information (e.g., a coding frequency comparison worksheet) and office visit patient encounter forms (e.g., for diabetes, hypertension, sore throat). In addition, copies of AFP's Authors' Guide and the updated ICD-9 code tear-out reference from FPM will be available.

Writing Workshop for New Authors

On Friday, October 5, Jay Siwek, MD, editor of AFP, and Barry Weiss, MD, editor of Family Medicine, the journal of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, will present a workshop for physicians wanting to learn more about writing for publication, including research articles, articles on family medicine education, and clinical review articles. Advance registration is required. Physicians who attend this workshop are encouraged to bring writing samples of works in progress. The editors will focus on the basic steps in writing and preparing a manuscript, on what happens to a manuscript after it is submitted to the editorial office, and on how to respond effectively to comments from reviewers and editors. Additional information about the Assembly is available athttps://www.aafp.org/assembly.

Reader Feedback

Even if you are unable to attend the Assembly or visit the Publications Division booth, you can give us your feedback any time via the AFP reader feedback card available in the Clinical Quiz section of the first issue of each month or by sending an e-mail to afpedit@aafp.org.