Workplace-based assessment of family medicine competencies using "field note tool" - A pilot study.

Background: Department of Family Medicine in a medical college in South India introduced "field note" (FN) as a tool for Work-Place Based Assessment in postgraduate training. FN collects "open-ended" feedback from both resident and faculty and helps them to arrive at an action plan. This study describes our experience of implementing FN and perceptions of learners and faculty.

Injected corticosteroids for treating plantar heel pain in adults.

Background: Plantar heel pain, commonly resulting from plantar fasciitis, often results in significant morbidity. Treatment options include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), orthoses, physical therapy, physical agents (e.g.

Quality of life of a patient with type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study in rural South India.

Background: With a high prevalence of diabetes in India, there is a need to study the impact of this disease on the quality of life (QoL) of the patients.

Materials And Methods: This facility-based cross-sectional study assessed the QoL of patients attending the diabetic clinic using the World Health Organization (WHO) QoL BREF instrument in Tamil Nadu. The QoL was analyzed domain-wise and various socio-demographic factors affecting the QoL were studied.

International classification of primary care: an Indian experience.

Background: India is in the process of transition to universal health coverage for Indian citizens. The focus is to strengthen the primary and secondary level services. Coupled with this national scenario, the development of Family medicine as a distinct discipline is in a crucial stage.

Family medicine in undergraduate medical education in India.

The Medical Council of India has set appropriate and relevant objectives to train each medical student into a basic doctor for the country. Even though they envisage that these basic doctors would work as physicians of first contact, providing for the health needs of India at primary and secondary care level, the site of training and the context of clinical teaching do not seem to empower the students to become a basic doctor. 'Vision 2015', the document written by the board of governors of medical council of India suggests reforms in medical education such as early clinical exposure, integration of principles of family medicine, and clinical training in the secondary care level.

Role of Family Medicine Education in India's Step Toward Universal Health Coverage.

India's commitment to universal health coverage has grown stronger with the submission of High Level Expert Group report by the Planning Commission in 2012. With this report comes the commitment to increase the primary health-care workforce to meet the population needs. However, the focus should not be just to increase the number of health workers, but to produce better health workers.

How to avoid 3 common errors in dementia screening.

The simple solutions outlined here will help you to sharpen your evaluative tools and improve accuracy.

Morbidity Profile of Inpatients in a Secondary Care Center Run by Family Physicians.

Background: There is a scarcity of records of morbidity pattern in secondary care centers. Reliable morbidity data will help in proper allocation of human resources.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective study of inpatient admission records of an urban secondary health center run by family physicians was done between April 2010 and March 2011.

Antibiotic therapy for Shigella dysentery.

Background: Shigella dysentery is a relatively common illness and occasionally causes death, worldwide. Mild symptoms are self-limiting but in more severe cases, antibiotics are recommended for cure and preventing relapse. The antibiotics recommended are diverse, have regional differences in sensitivity, and have side effects.

Antibiotic therapy for Shigella dysentery.

Background: Shigella dysentery is a relatively common illness and occasionally causes death, worldwide. Mild symptoms are self-limiting but in more severe cases, antibiotics are recommended for cure and preventing relapse. The antibiotics recommended are diverse, have regional differences in sensitivity, and have side effects.

Comparing infants' preference for correlated audiovisual speech with signal-level computational models.

How much of infant behaviour can be accounted for by signal-level analyses of stimuli? The current paper directly compares the moment-by-moment behaviour of 8-month-old infants in an audiovisual preferential looking task with that of several computational models that use the same video stimuli as presented to the infants. One type of model utilizes only signal-level properties of visual motion whereas the other adds audiovisual integration (either through correlation or instantaneous addition of audio and visual signals). Together these models account for a significant portion of the variance in infant looking.

Two-month-old infants' sensitivity to changes in arbitrary syllable-object pairings: the role of temporal synchrony.

To explore early lexical development, the authors examined infants' sensitivity to changes in spoken syllables and objects given different temporal relations between syllable-object pairings. In Experiment 1, they habituated 2-month-olds to 1 syllable, /tah/ or /gah/, paired with an object in synchronous (utterances coincident with object motions, N = 16) or asynchronous (utterances erratic relative to object motions, N = 16) conditions. In the asynchronous condition, the audio track preceded or succeeded the visual track by 1,200 ms.

The progression of behavior in dementia: an in-office guide for clinicians.

This article examines the progression of behavioral changes in 200 community living and long term care patients using the Kingston Standardized Behavioral Assessment, a measure of traditional neuropsychiatric behaviors (behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia) and neuropsychological behaviors. A group of patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease or mixed dementia (Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia), was assessed using the Kingston Standardized Behavioral Assessment, ranked by total Kingston Standardized Behavioral Assessment score and were divided into quartile-based groups. The scores revealed changes in behavior patterns across quartiles.

Perceived stigma and community integration among clients of assertive community treatment.

Facilitating the integration of persons with psychiatric disabilities is an important goal of community programs. In addition to limitations such as inadequate housing, poverty, and unemployment, a common barrier to community adjustment identified by people with psychiatric disabilities is their perception of being stigmatized. This study examined the relationships between perceived stigma and community integration in 95 clients of assertive community treatment (ACT) teams, using sequential multiple regression procedures.