An Integral Part Of Healthcare
We believe that health promotion and disease prevention are an integral part of health care and are likely to become even more important with ongoing health care reform. Family Medicine, of the many medicine specialties, can play one of the largest roles in promoting health and preventing disease. As shifts in financing of health care change the way medicine is practiced, it may become increasingly important for Family Medicine physicians to have strong skills in these areas.
Our program has had a strong emphasis in HP/DP since 1982, when we received a three-year federal grant to develop a new curricular area. Since then, the HP/DP curriculum has undergone continual evaluation and improvement, and today is one of the most thorough and innovative in the country.
In our program, residents develop expertise in general health maintenance, screening, risk factor management, health behavior change counseling, and making use of community and system resources. Specifically, using knowledge, perspectives and strategies learned in the HP/DP curriculum, graduates will be able to help their patients exercise more, eat healthier throughout their lives, manage their stress, and prevent accidents in their homes. With our emphasis on teaching general counseling skills, the graduates will be effective at the more difficult of the HP/DP interventions: helping patients to stop smoking and to manage their diet better.
These skills are learned through a variety of experiences including group didactic teaching, scheduled one-on-one teaching, real-time precepting in the outpatient clinic, scheduled longitudinal counseling supervision (pre- and post-patient encounter), and specific individual consultation. Learning materials include the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Guide to Clinical Preventive Services and Clinician's Handbook of Preventive Services; The Physician's Guide to Outpatient Nutrition, and a computerized patient education data base.
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