Updates from January, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • alexandregouveia 16:04 on 23/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Family Physicians on Twitter 

    redcrosstwitter

    I think it could be useful to list all the family physicians/GPs or GP trainees that are on Twitter.

    If you want to add someone, please write your comment below or send me a tweet.

    - @amargaridaz – GP trainee

    - @amcunningham / www – GP and Clinical Lecturer… interested in everything:)

    - @brownleader / www – inner city primary care doctor

    - @doc_rob / www – Primary Care Doc, Goofball, Daddy, Hubby

    - @doctoranonymous / www – Family Physician, MedBlogger, Internet radio show host, all around nice guy

    - @drbonis / www

    - @DrHubbard / www – Family physician and publisher of James Hubbard’s My Family Doctor, which is medical information for the general public written by health-care professionals.

    - @drottematic / www – Final year med student at UBC, Vancouver. Canadian Family Practice Resident, starting July 1, 2009

    - @Dr_Paige / www – Family Practice doc for Family Practice West in Columbus, Ohio

    - @GPforhire – Family Doctor, husband, father, geek, gardener, old skool Jedi, um, and loads of other interesting things…

    - @holmspun / www – A Family Doc and a Medical Student musing about medicine in the Midwest.

    - @japrados

    - @jmbhan / www – I am a Family Physician and tech junky, trying to change the world

    - @kevinmd / www – Primary care doctor Kevin Pho, M.D. provides commentary on physicians, patients, hospitals, medicine and health care.

    - @KittKlaiss –  Small Town Doc, mom of 2, knitter, scifi junkie

    - @meducate / www – Global, strategic medical education professional. Interested in clinical practice gaps and outcomes measures. Also humorous speaker/writer globally.

    - @mgfamiliarnet / www – MGFamiliar.net

    - @rqgb / www – Spanish GP trainee in Madrid

    - @ruraldoctoring / www – Rural family doctor, hospitalist, baby catcher, restlessly creative.

    - @tedeytan / www – Health Informatics. Patient Empowerment. Washington, DC, Oh, I’m a doctor too.

    - @tiagoMGF / www – GP trainee/Family Medicine resident and Freelance Writer


    Join the Primary Care Twitter Group, launched by @amcunningham.


    Check the full list of medical Twitterers created by @medicalstudent here and take a look at the Twitter Top 100 Health and Medicine rank.

     

  • alexandregouveia 19:43 on 15/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Globalizing Health Knowledge 

    banner2vc

    Some days ago, I wrote a newsletter for the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice and Family Medicine, regarding health literacy and the impact of knowledge in healthcare. This is a subject I am very keen on, and it will dramatically change the way health systems organize themselves and also the relationship between healthcare providers and patients.

    For an aditional point of view, I’m also posting a video interview to Sir Muir Gray, Director of the UK NHS National Knowledge Service, focusing the importance and goals of mapofmedicine®. Thanks to @amcunningham for the bookmark on the video.

    Globalizing Health Knowledge

    Tell me, I forget.
    Show me, I remember.
    Involve me, I understand.
    Chinese proverb

    The everchanging essence of knowledge and the continuous seek for new discoveries have driven mankind to a tenacious dedication for unveiling the paths and boundaries of the human body. The extent of our knowledge about ourselves has increadibly reached the genetic book of life, allowing in a certain way to forecast the future. But is this immense knowledge leading us to higher levels of health literacy?

    Nowadays, citizens are empowered through the fast access to information, and the gap between patients and health information has significantly been curtailed. Health related searches on the internet have increased over the past few years, and online communities of patients, that have physically never met, are flourishing at a fast pace. These current trends of the information and communication technologies are changing the lives of individuals and their families, and also the way that health systems are developing.

    We see health consumers rapidly becoming key health players, taking increased responsability for their health status and data, and ultimately gaining critical knowledge about the quality the health care they receive. Patient-centeredness is a new order, and consequently the web 2.0 effect on the patient-doctor relationship is far for being totally understood.

    For general practitioners and family physicians, who are at the forefront of health care systems around the world, this represents an exciting challenge. Moreover, this undoubtedly requires an upgrade of skills which entails joining the technological breakthrough and to face a new set of communication channels: instant messaging, electronic mail and virtual reality, just to name a few… Reassuring the important role of primary care providers in promoting health literacy is of crucial importance and can be achieved at a global scale, and not just simply in local settings.

    Thirty years after the Declaration of Alma-Ata, primary health care needs once again gather forces in order to help decreasing inequalities around the world. The demands of health care systems require innovative solutions. As such, eHealth now represent the common voice for globalizing health literacy. The main goal for the Second Virtual Congress of General Practice and Family Medicine is to enable the use of eHealth, so as to empower citizens to use health information in an operational way – in other words, working globally for a wiser health.



     

    • Dr Amina Ather 15:29 on 27/01/2009 Permalink | Reply

      Hello! we are yet trying globalizing methods but can we meet on a single platform.

  • alexandregouveia 03:13 on 14/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Evidence Based Medicine, , Practice Based Evidence,   

    From EBM to PBE 

    lwgreen

    On 16 January, Prof. Lawrence Green from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics – University of California, will be in Lisbon to present a conference entitled  “If we want more evidence-based practice, we need more practice-based evidence”. His article “Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence?”, published in the journal Family Practice, promotes a needed change in research priorities and knowledge itself, by stating that the actual research is based on methods and patients that are far away from the reality of the daily practices.

    I found this Medscape video that focus the same subject:

    Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence?

    abstract

    The usual search for explanations and solutions for the research-practice gap tends to analyze ways to communicate evidence-based practice guidelines to practitioners more efficiently and effectively from the end of a scientific pipeline. This examination of the pipeline looks upstream for ways in which the research itself is rendered increasingly irrelevant to the circumstances of practice by the process of vetting the research before it can qualify for inclusion in systematic reviews and the practice guidelines derived from them. It suggests a ‘fallacy of the pipeline’ implicit in one-way conceptualizations of translation, dissemination and delivery of research to practitioners. Secondly, it identifies a ‘fallacy of the empty vessel’ implicit in the assumptions underlying common characterizations of the practitioner as a recipient of evidence-based guidelines. Remedies are proposed that put emphasis on participatory approaches and more practice-based production of the research and more attention to external validity in the peer review, funding, publication and systematic reviews of research in producing evidence-based guidelines.

    Keywords. External validity, evidence-based practice, dissemination, generalizability.

    Green LW. Making research relevant: if it is an evidence-based practice, where’s the practice-based evidence? Family Practice 2008; 25: i20–i24.

     

  • alexandregouveia 01:02 on 08/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Family Medicine Residency Program in Portugal 

    medicaleducation

    Tiago Villanueva wrote in Medical Education (a forum created by Deirde Bonnycastle) about the Family Medicine curriculum in Portugal, explaining how a medical student becomes a family doctor.

    I’m already preparing myself for the Final Examination in July… almost there! :)


    Family Medicine Residency Program in Portugal

    tiagomgf

    Portugal is a Southwestern European country which has been a member of the European Union since 1986, and a founding member of the Euro Zone since 1999. In 2008, Portugal was ranked the 33rd most developed country in the World according to Human Development Index. There are seven medical schools in Portugal (two in the capital city, Lisbon, two in Porto, one in Coimbra, Braga and Covilhã). Studying Medicine in Portugal takes six years, and afterwards, the newly qualified doctors must take a 100 questions MCQ national examination (whose questions are based on the American textbook ”Harrisson’s Principles of Internal Medicine”), which ranks candidates all over the country. Then, newly qualified doctors choose the specialty and training institution based on the order of choice provided by that ranking, that is, the highest ranked candidate in the country chooses the specialty and training institution of his/her choice, while the lowest ranked candidate has to contend with the leftovers. After graduation and before residency, young doctors must undergo a one-year internship called the common year, in which they rotate through Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and Public Health, Paediatrics, Obstetrics, and General Surgery.

    Even though Family Medicine is not considered a specialty in all European Countries, in Portugal it is considered a medical specialty on par with all the other medical and surgical specialties. There is a three year Residency Program in place, which varies slightly according to the region of the country (North, Centre or South Family Medicine Residency Program Coordination Centre). Residents are assessed on a yearly basis (or after each rotation in the Centre region) according to the following methods:

    Performance Assessment: this is subjective, and carried out by the tutor of the resident in the end of a specific rotation. This could be the resident’s tutor at the practice, or a tutor at the hospital, in the case of hospital rotations. It covers criteria such as

    Knowledge Assessment: this is an oral examination at the end of each year, and covers all the rotations done by the trainee in that year. The jury of the exam consists of two family physicians, and one of them is the tutor of the resident at the practice. Questions are more or less open or closed, for example “What are the referral criteria for Community Acquired Pneumonia”, or “A patient collapses in front of you at the practice. What do you do?”

    Rotation Report: residents must submit an extensive report describing all the activities carried out in each rotation. They are compiled in one single document each year, read by the jury carrying out the yearly examination and criticized. This is more of an actual preparation for the submission of the final CV in the Final Examination (see below).

    Video Recordings of the resident’s consultations: this is not done in every Coordination Centre, for example, in the Centre.

    Final Examination: this is done in the end of the Residency Program, is spread out across several days, and includes a CV discussion, which is submitted previously, a knowledge and practical assessment, the latter implying a real patient encounter, and revolved around history taking skills, physical examination skills, and the ability to integrate information in order to devise a management plan for the patient.

    Tiago Villanueva, M.D.
    GP/Family Medicine trainee, Lisbon, Portugal
    http://www.virtualcongressgpfm.com/

     

    • Video Hosting 10:12 on 17/10/2009 Permalink | Reply

      Very well written post however, I would recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section.

      Keep up the good work.

  • alexandregouveia 00:22 on 08/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , ,   

    Personal Health Records in Primary Care 

    EMR Services of Canada Blog has a interesting post about Personal Health Records in Primary Care, their importance and the impact on the quality of the provided health care.

    Read the post by clicking the image:

    emrservicescanadablog

    More information about Personal Health Records:

    - Wikipedia: Personal Health Record

    - Personal Health Records 2.0 by Gunther Eysenbach

    - Microsoft Health Vault

    - Google Health

     

  • alexandregouveia 15:28 on 06/01/2009 Permalink | Reply  

    Medical Twitterers 

    medstudentblog

    @medicalstudent did a great job posting a detailed list of Medical Twitterers, that can be very handy for Twitter beginners.

    Check it out by clicking the image.

    medtwitlist

     

  • alexandregouveia 01:22 on 06/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Apple   

    Steve Jobs has spoken 

    Steve Jobs

    Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs wrote a letter about his health condition, a subject that has led to many false rumors, some of them regarding his death. I’m posting it here sticking to the fact that the world needs to stop for a while and think how sometimes we are excessively demanding to each other.

    Get well, Steve.

    Dear Apple Community,

    For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

    Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

    I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

    As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

    Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

    The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

    I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

    So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

    Steve

     

  • alexandregouveia 02:04 on 04/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , twtcard, twtpoll   

    Twitter Surveys: twtpoll 

    twtpoll

    Felipe Coimbra, a brazilian entrepeneur, created twtpoll, a twitter poll application for multiple choice questions that supplies a small URL for tweeting.

    Read how Felipe started twtpoll here, and check another application called twtcard.

    Ongoing polls

     

    • Felipe 03:27 on 04/01/2009 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for linking. I’m glad you found twtpoll useful!

    • alexandregouveia 09:45 on 04/01/2009 Permalink | Reply

      Thanks for your comment, Felipe.

      I will look forward for your new twtapps!

  • alexandregouveia 01:24 on 04/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Social Media Map 

    Overdrive Interactive has launched on their website a Social Media Map, with a PDF clickable version that arranges graphically a significant number of web 2.0 services.

    It’s a great tool for understanding the social networking, although it has a static content. Perhaps we are already in need for a website with  dynamic information in order to follow the evolutional trends.

    socialmediamap

     

  • alexandregouveia 20:21 on 03/01/2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Twitter made simple 

    This is a funny video that explains Twitter in a simple way. Enjoy.

     

     

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