Family medicine physicians have been on the front lines of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; however, research and publications in family medicine journals are rarely discussed. In this study, a bibliometric analysis was conducted on COVID-19-related articles published in PubMed-indexed English language family medicine journals in 2020, which recorded the publication date and author’s country and collected citations from Google Scholar. Additionally, we used LitCovid (an open database of COVID-19 literature from PubMed) to determine the content categories of each article and total number of global publications. We found that 33 family medicine journals published 5107 articles in 2020, of which 409 (8.0%) were COVID-19-related articles. Among the article categories, 107 were original articles, accounting for only 26.2% of the articles. In terms of content, the main category was prevention, with 177 articles, accounting for 43.3% of the articles. At the beginning of the epidemic, 10 articles were published in family medicine journals in January 2020, accounting for 11% of all COVID-19-related articles worldwide; however, this accounted for <0.5% of all disciplinary studies in the entire year. Therefore, family medicine journals indeed play a sentinel role, and the intensities and timeliness of COVID-19 publications deserve further investigation.

Background: This study aimed to assess the use of medical record items in clinical research in one large academic medical center in Taiwan. Methods: A descriptive survey design was adopted to collect the data. Articles published in 2018 by Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) staff as the first author were obtained. The types of specialties and types of research were analyzed. To understand the conditions for the use of medical records, the retrospective research using hospital’s medical records were analyzed. Each article was read in entirety to realize the use and number of patients and the medical record items. Results: Among the 362 articles first-authored by TVGH staff in 2018, 219 (60.4%) were classified as clinical studies, 60 (16.6%) as basic studies, 53 (14.6%) as database studies, and 30 (8.2%) as other categories. About 50% of the retrospective research using TVGH medical records had a case number <100 (67 cases, 49.6%) with an average number of 41 cases and 13 studies (9.6%) had a case number >1000. Analysis of the number of medical record items used in 135 retrospective research studies based on TVGH medical records showed that 118 (87.4%) used basic patient information. In addition to basic information, notes written by professionals were used most frequently (73 cases, 54.0%), whereas medication information was used in 50 cases (37.0%); laboratory test data were used in 49 cases (36.2%); and body measurements was used in 27 cases (20%). Conclusion: More than one-third of publications utilized medical records, but the patient numbers and record items in use were relatively limited. In the era of digitalization and big data analytics, the potential of medical records in research deserves attention. Investment in establishing a more accessible database of medical records to access nonstructural, descriptive medical records could be considered.

Family physicians play an essential role as gatekeepers in primary health care. However, most studies in the past focused on the geographic maldistribution of family physicians, and few studies focused on the distribution of family physicians between private practices and hospitals. This study aims to analyze the trends in practice locations of family physicians in Taiwan between 1999 and 2018, using the databases of the Taiwan Association of Family Medicine and Taiwan Medical Association. Although the annual number of physicians registered as family physicians had steadily increased from 1876 in 1999 to 3655 in 2018, the ratio of family physicians practicing in hospitals to total family physicians remained stable around 40% in the study period. Even after eliminating the trainees who were entirely registered at hospitals, the proportion of hospital-based family physicians still accounted for about one-third of the total in each year. In conclusion, family physicians had been continuously demanded by hospitals in Taiwan. If the supply of primary care-oriented family physicians is insufficient outside hospitals, health manpower planning would require urgent adjustments.