An important aspect of family medicine education in the United States and abroad is behavioral medicine. Interpersonal and communication skills, mental health assessment, and sensitivity to diverse patient populations are areas of curricular importance. This article describes the behavioral medicine portion of a family medicine consultation with Vietnam, in progress since 1999. The needs assessment for behavioral medicine reveals few monetary or personnel resources available for training family physicians or caring for patients with mental health problems. Challenges of conducting cross-cultural consultations are many and include confronting language barriers.

Faculty members in family practice residencies are increasingly being asked to help residents develop skills in the use of informatics and evidence-based medicine (EBM). In order to do this successfully the teachers themselves must be skilled in the use of these tools. Recognizing the need for such training, the Maine Medical Center Family Practice Residency Program designed a faculty development project to increase knowledge and skills in the use of information technology. This project, which was carried out in 1999-2001, utilized a multifaceted approach that included improving the residency's technology infrastructure, conducting two instructional workshops, and offering EBM mentoring for preceptors. Faculty members also designed and carried out independent informatics projects. Pre- and post-project assessments of faculty members demonstrated a significant improvement in computer and EBM skills, and informal feedback from residents indicates that these skills have been successfully applied to the faculty members' teaching of residents and their practice of family medicine. This project had a positive impact on the faculty members in the residency program, increasing both their ability to employ information technology in individual and group teaching sessions and their use of EBM in clinical practice. Also, the culture within the residency program has been changed to one of utilizing computers and the Internet as principal resources for up-to-date information.

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