Medical education curricula increasingly are incorporating courses on cultural competency and skills development in working with ethnically diverse patient populations as well as courses on genetics and genomics. The authors support these efforts and believe the next step is integration of genetics into cultural competency programs and similarly, cultural competency into genetics curricula. In this paper, the authors describe the work of the Genetics in Primary Care Faculty Development Working Group on Cultural Competency, a federally-funded initiative to prepare generalist faculty to teach genetics as part of ambulatory education. Over a 12-month period, this team wrote a module on cultural competency and nine new clinical cases, and developed the PRACTICE mnemonic (prevalence, risk, attitude, communication, testing, investigation, consent, empowerment) to help health care professionals integrate cultural competency skills in genetics into primary care. More specifically, the PRACTICE mnemonic integrates information emerging from experts in health disparities and doctor-patient communication to build a comprehensive model for addressing the relevance of culture and ethnicity in the delivery of genetic services. Lastly, this paper illustrates a systematic method of covering key areas of cultural competency through discussion of a patient with a genetic disorder as well as presents an argument as to why cultural competency is highly relevant to the delivery of genetic services especially as part of generalists' clinical practice.

Purpose To examine the opinions of family medicine residency program directors concerning the potential impact of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) resident duty hour recommendations on patient care and resident education. Methods A survey was mailed to 455 family medicine residency program directors. Data were summarized and analyzed using Epi Info statistical software. Significance was set at the P < .01 level. Results A total of 265 surveys were completed (60.9% response rate). A majority of family medicine residency program directors disagreed or strongly disagreed that the recent IOM duty hour recommendations will, in general, result in improved patient safety and resident education. Further, a majority of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that the proposed IOM rules would result in residents becoming more compassionate, more effective family physicians. Conclusion A majority of family medicine residency program directors believe that the proposed IOM duty hour recommendations would have a primarily detrimental effect on both patient care and resident education.

We would add that reviewing the applications of funded CTSAs, engaging funded CSA researchers as consultants, and approaching the CTSA process as team players are all potentially productive strategies. The CTSA Web site of the National Center for Research Resources of the NIH contains a plethora of information as well as links to all currently funded CTSA Web sites. 3A fi nal strategy that we will mention is that 8 of our respondents indicated that they would be applying as a collaborative institution rather than as a lead institution. As mentioned above, 1 family medicine department is currently participating through a collaborative arrangement. This may be a productive strategy for departments that have a distinctive contribution to make, but are located in institutions that would not otherwise be competitive for a CTSA. Collaboration across institutions and between CTSAs is strongly encouraged as part of the vision of accelerating research fi ndings into improved outcomes for patients.Bernard

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US medical school graduates-65 more than in 2007-chose family medicine for their careers, and 2,404 of 2,654 family medicine residency positions were taken, for a fi ll rate of nearly 91%.