We offer recommendations for enhancing longitudinal preceptorships for preceptors, students, and leaders in medical education.

Older medical students express unique concerns regarding the learning environment and the impact of medical school on their personal lives. This study provides preliminary information that our older students may have more special needs and concerns than traditional students.

This article explores the lessons learned by ten demonstration schools regarding the early clinical experience (ECE) component of the Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum (IGC) PROJECT: Students in ECE at these schools participated in longitudinal, one-to-one or two-on-one preceptorships with primary care physician preceptors in outpatient settings. Development of an ECE was a key component of curricular change at each of the IGC Project schools. Shattering the traditional barrier between preclinical and clinical years of the 2 + 2 medical curriculum model helped create a leading edge for innovation at each of the schools. In this article, the authors incorporated evaluation information from several sources, including the external evaluation reports of the IGC Project, final annual reports from demonstration schools, and curriculum evaluations from the coauthors' schools (the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine).

The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics of and issues faced by female family physicians practicing in rural areas. A 37-item survey was designed to obtain demographic information about the background, community and practice of rural female physicians. An open-ended question regarding the issues and problems faced by female physicians in rural communities was included. Study subjects were identified from the membership of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). The questionnaire was mailed to all 850 active female AAFP members practicing in communities with less than 50,000 inhabitants during the winter of 1999. Completed and usable surveys were received from 587 (69.9 percent). The average age of respondents was 45. The majority were married (81.1 percent) and had children (80.1 percent). Half of the women had grown up in communities of 25,000 or less population. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents had no rural exposure in medical school; 39 percent had no rural exposure in residency; and 16 percent had no rural exposure in medical school or residency. The majority of respondents (62 percent) practiced in communities of less than 10,000. A large majority (70 percent) of these women planned to stay in the community for 10 years or more, with 58.6 percent responding that they plan to stay indefinitely. Assumptions regarding rural physicians, especially women, must be updated to accurately assist communities in recruiting rural physicians and to assist medical schools and residencies in adequately preparing graduates for rural practice.

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