A physician peer support writing group.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Barriers to publication can be overcome through a peer support writing group in an academic department of family practice. This study describes the experience and outcomes of a writing group in a family practice department. METHODS: A writing group was established to provide collaboration in identifying potential research and/or writing projects, to assist individual faculty to complete unfinished work for submission, to match journals appropriate to the individual group member's work, and to provide peer support for faculty members through attention to group process. Resource materials included instructions for authors for various journals and writing support literature. Minutes were taken at each meeting, and the manuscripts presented were tracked. Individual publication records in CVs and citations in Index Medicus were used to generate pre-group and post-group publication records for group participants and nonparticipants. RESULTS: The writing group met 23 times in 36 months. Attendance ranged from 3 to 10 participants. Fifty writing projects were discussed, and 12 of the discussed manuscripts were published in indexed journals. The seven most frequent attendees increased their publications as first author from one publication over the 3 years prior to the writing group to 10 publications over the first 3 years of the writing group. Comparison of the attendees' publication records with nonparticipant members of the department demonstrated an increase in publication success for participants. CONCLUSIONS: A peer support writing group, emphasizing group process and respectful collaboration, has increased the publication frequency of faculty in a Canadian department of family practice.

Reactive arthritis and other sequelae following sporadic Salmonella typhimurium infection in British Columbia, Canada: a case control study.

OBJECTIVE: To describe sequelae occurring in the 3 months after sporadic Salmonella typhimurium (ST) infection in British Columbia (BC), Canada. METHODS: We compared the incidence of sequelae to similar symptoms in controls; identified risk factors for developing sequelae; identified the incidence of reactive arthritis (ReA) as diagnosed by a rheumatologist, and assessed primary care physician diagnosis of ReA. A questionnaire was administered by telephone to cases of ST occurring in BC between December 1, 1999, and November 30, 2000; and to controls obtained from the BC provincial client registry. Cases reporting symptoms were followed up by a rheumatologist. RESULTS: Thirty-five of 66 (53%) cases reported any symptom, 17 (26%) reported joint symptoms. The Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio (weighted by sex and pediatric/adult) of a salmonella case reporting "any symptom" compared to controls was 5.42; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.18-16.27; and reporting joint symptoms was 4.40; 95% CI: 1.25-19.53. The sex distribution of cases reporting joint symptoms was not significantly different. No medication taken during the salmonella infection was significantly different between the cases who had joint symptoms and those who did not. Four cases (2 adults, 2 children) were considered by the rheumatologist to have symptoms consistent with ReA, 2 of these had been told by a physician that their symptoms were related to their ST infection. CONCLUSION: Cases were more than 4 times more likely to report joint symptoms than controls; and despite the loss of many cases to followup, 6% of all cases were considered to have ReA.