Women's Health Training in Japan Primary Care Association Certified Family Medicine Residency Programs: Status of Programs, Residents and Medical Students / 日本プライマリ・ケア連合学会誌

Introduction: We conducted 3 surveys to elucidate the current status of Women's Health (WH) training in Japanese General Practice Residency Programs, and the opinions that the residency program directors and learners have about the training.Methods: Three questionnaire surveys were conducted during Aug-Nov, 2015. Subjects of the surveys were residency program directors (Survey 1), resident physicians (Survey 2) and medical students (Survey 3).Results: Survey 1 (response rate 42.7%): Regarding the programs, 6.8% and 38.9% provided compulsory WH rotations and selective rotations, respectively. Of the respondents, 71.4% wished to improve WH training, whereas 68.0% noted barriers, including the shortage of teaching physicians, and lack of understanding by teaching physicians regarding the needs and objectives of WH training. Survey 2 (response rate 45.8%): Of the residents, 14.5% and 27.9% had compulsory and selective WH rotations, respectively. The WH training was reported to be insufficient by 57.8% of the respondents. Survey 3 (response rate 85.4%): Of the medical students, 97% desired WH training and 97.7% wished to practice WH in the future.Conclusion: Our surveys revealed WH training in current Japanese General Practice Residency Programs to be inadequate, and both trainers and trainees desired further improvement of their training programs.

Family Medicine Research : New perspectives on family medicine research / 日本プライマリ・ケア連合学会誌

Family medicine is a relatively new and rapidly growing discipline in Japan. Nevertheless, for family medicine to achieve recognition as a unique medical discipline in Japan, family medicine must develop its own research agenda and appropriate research methods. However, existing literature in Japanese for guiding the design of family medicine research is scarce. This paper introduces strategies for identifying research questions that emerge from clinical “stories” and connects them with appropriate research designs. This paper provides examples of major categories of research designs including those using a single method and mixed-methods designs that take advantage of the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods. A solid research foundation in family medicine needs to be established that preserves the unique attributes of this generalist discipline. Family medicine researchers are needed who can lead research teams to address the complex research questions emanating from primary care clinical practice.

Community-Oriented Primary Care (COPC) for Japanese in Pittsburgh, U. S. A / 日本プライマリ・ケア連合学会誌

 Living overseas affects heath significantly. This needs to be addressed adequately for Japanese who live in the U. S. based on the existing evidence of negative impacts on health such as increased coronary heart disease mortality and stress. In addition to care at individual level as primary care providers, community-oriented primary care (COPC) provides primary care physicians with great potential to use as a tool of community medicine to improve their health at the community level. In this article, we report our case of COPC activity ; defining the community, choosing the health issue, implementing an intervention and its initial evaluation as well as the process of involving the community targeting Japanese in Pittsburgh, USA. The present article also includes a hypothesis-driven research question, measurement, analysis and the results followed by discussion with the lessons learned through our COPC activities. This article will not only inform readers of the COPC case but also provide practical and applicable insight to community medicine in readers' settings.