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STFM 38th Annual Conference 2005
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Dear STFM Members and Family Medicine Colleagues,
Family medicine educators have struggled to address a steady decline in interest in medical students choosing careers in family medicine during the past 5 years. This decline has resulted in renewed marketing among residencies, exploration of innovative combined residencies with psychiatry and emergency medicine, and summits to formulate strategies to reengineer the discipline and energize the pipeline. The thinness of the pipeline has stimulated medical school faculty and family medicine department chairs to seek additional curricular time, especially during the basic science years, respond aggressively to turf battles with other disciplines, creatively explore new enterprises within the academic health center, and establish new academic partners to develop new niche markets.
These changing times often find family medicine faculty and/ or leaders competing with one another for the best residency candidates, competing with other primary care departments for the opportunity to teach the most visible multidisciplinary courses, competing for shrinking resources in primary care research, and endeavoring to partner with communities that have been traditionally distrustful of academic health centers. The competitiveness within and among family medicine educators can either result in conflict that hinders progress and provides little benefit to faculty, trainees, and communities, or can stimulate creativity and collaboration. The most successful collaborations are those that result from a careful analysis of the problems, a prioritization of input from all stakeholders, and result in win-win solutions.
The 2005 Annual Spring Conference will provide a platform for spotlighting projects and curricula from academic institutions around the country. We will be challenged to demonstrate the relevance of our projects and programs during a period that has seen unprecedented natural disasters within the United States as well as in Southeast and South Asia and Africa and political unrest on multiple continents. Every project we endeavor is inextricably linked to the larger context of community, nation, and region. As a discipline, family medicine has traditionally displayed a focus and commitment to the communities we serve. This commitment must supersede any conflict in which we find ourselves in order to preserve the servant leadership on which we founded our specialty.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King, Jr, Strength to Love, 1963.
I look forward to being with you in New Orleans.
Jeannette E. South-Paul, MD
STFM President