Research Published in 2003 by U.S. Family Medicine Authors

Abstract

Building a healthy research enterprise is central to family medicine's ability to provide the best possible care to patients and is important to the future of the discipline.1,2 Although family medicine benefits from the research of other clinical disciplines and from research in the basic and social sciences, its practitioners also need answers to clinical questions from studies involving family medicine's own patient populations and practice settings.3-6 Similarly, innovations in the organization of family physicians' offices and in the training of future family physicians depend on data from family medicine's health services and education researchers. Some observers within and outside the discipline have felt that family medicine does not carry out enough research [7][8][9][10] and that increasing financial and other pressures within its academic departments are making research more difficult. [11][12] Recognizing these concerns and the discipline's need for research, family medicine's national leaders have lobbied to support the discipline's researchers with more funding, training programs, and publishing venues. 1,[13][14][15][16] Whether family medicine's research enterprise is healthy and growing or succumbing to external pressures should be understood and monitored. The health of a discipline's research enterprisehaving a sizable and productive researcher workforce, committed and capable research institutions, This article was externally peer reviewed.

Thirty Years of Family Medicine Publications in Israel (1975-2004): What, Where, and How Much?

“…To develop as a profession and compete with other clinical disciplines it will be important to demonstrate increasing productivity in research and publications. This is further strengthened by Pathman et al, 5 who reported on research publications in 2003 by US family medicine authors. Publishing grew substantially from 2000 by 58%, the number of authors publishing increased by 41%, and journals used increased by 82%.…”

A bibliometric analysis of Australian general practice publications from 1980 to 2007 using PubMed

“…Considering this increase in PubMed publications, we may hypothesise that Australian general practice is more productive than is generally appreciated, similar to the conclusion that was reached after a comprehensive study of US family medicine research publications for the year 2003. 14 The lack of general practice research identified by the Australian Government 15 seems to contrast with the increasing growth of health and medical research in Australia. 16 Although the annual NHMRC funding doubled to reach $412 million by 2005, 17 the general practice share was a mere $3.7 million (0.5%) of the total.…”

Calling All Scholars to the Council of Academic Family Medicine Educational Research Alliance (Cera)

“…The current state of affairs is that as a specialty, we underperform in scholarly and research output compared with our peers in other specialties, 4 and although this has been acknowledged for a while, 5 improvements in research productivity have been slow. Many barriers remain to the generation of research and scholarly output from departments of family medicine.…”