"Family doctors are also people": a qualitative analysis of how family physicians managed competing personal and professional responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Family physicians (FPs) fill an essential role in public health emergencies yet have frequently been neglected in pandemic response plans. This exclusion harms FPs in their clinical roles and has unintended consequences in the management of concurrent personal responsibilities, many of which were amplified by the pandemic. The objective of our study was to explore the experiences of FPs during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand how they managed their competing professional and personal priorities.

Development and validation of a rurality index for healthcare research in Japan: a modified Delphi study.

Objectives: Rural-urban healthcare disparities exist globally. Various countries have used a rurality index for evaluating the disparities. Although Japan has many remote islands and rural areas, no rurality index exists.

Natural history of abdominal pain in family practice: Longitudinal study of electronic medical record data in southwestern Ontario.

Objective: To examine the frequency, natural history, and outcomes of 3 subtypes of abdominal pain (general abdominal pain, epigastric pain, localized abdominal pain) among patients visiting Canadian family practices.

Design: Retrospective cohort study with a 4-year longitudinal analysis.

Setting: Southwestern Ontario.

"There's nothing like a good crisis for innovation": a qualitative study of family physicians' experiences with virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Prior to the pandemic, Canada lagged behind other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in the uptake of virtual care. The onset of COVID-19, however, resulted in a near-universal shift to virtual primary care to minimise exposure risks. As jurisdictions enter a pandemic recovery phase, the balance between virtual and in-person visits is reverting, though it is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels.

Family physicians' responses to personal protective equipment shortages in four regions in Canada: a qualitative study.

Background: Despite well-documented increased demands and shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) during previous disease outbreaks, health systems in Canada were poorly prepared to meet the need for PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the primary care sector, PPE shortages impacted the delivery of health services and contributed to increased workload, fear, and anxiety among primary care providers. This study examines family physicians' (FPs) response to PPE shortages during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform future pandemic planning.

Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening in an academic family practice: Short-term impact of guideline changes.

Objective: To investigate abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening rates in the 6 months before and after the introduction of updated Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC) guidelines to determine effects on practice patterns, as well as to determine whether certain patient characteristics impact AAA screening rates.

Design: Retrospective chart review.

Setting: Academic family health centre in London, Ont.

Focused practice in family medicine: Quantitative study.

Objective: To determine factors associated with having a focused practice among a sample of family medicine graduates in Canada and to assess the characteristics of FPs with focused practices and the range of services provided by these FPs in relation to the full scope of office-based care.

Design: Secondary analyses of cross-sectional data from the 2013-2014 Western Family Medicine Resident Follow-Up Survey.

Setting: Western University in London, Ont.

Virtual family physician care during COVID-19: a mixed methods study using health administrative data and qualitative interviews.

Background: The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a rapid shift in primary health care from predominantly in-person to high volumes of virtual care. The pandemic afforded the opportunity to conduct a deep regional examination of virtual care by family physicians in London and Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada that would inform the foundation for virtual care in our region post-pandemic.

Objectives: (1) to determine volumes of in-person and virtual family physicians visits and characteristics of the family physicians and patients using them during the early COVID-19 pandemic; (2) to determine how virtual visit volumes changed over the pandemic, compared to in-person; and (3) to explore family physicians' experience in virtual visit adoption and implementation.

Family physician leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: roles, functions and key supports.

Purpose: Strong leadership in primary care is necessary to coordinate an effective pandemic response; however, descriptions of leadership roles for family physicians are absent from previous pandemic plans. This study aims to describe the leadership roles and functions family physicians played during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and identify supports and barriers to formalizing these roles in future pandemic plans.

Design/methodology/approach: This study conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with family physicians across four regions in Canada as part of a multiple case study.

The roles of family physicians during a pandemic.

Family physicians play important roles throughout all stages of a pandemic response; however, actionable descriptions outlining these roles are absent from current pandemic plans. Using a multiple case study design, we conducted a document analysis and interviewed 68 family physicians in four Canadian regions. We identified roles performed by family physicians in five distinct stages of pandemic response: pre-pandemic, phased closure and re-opening, acute care crisis, vaccination, and pandemic recovery.

Primary care bonus payments and patient-reported access in urban Ontario: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Rurality strongly correlates with higher pay-for-performance access bonuses, despite higher emergency department use and fewer primary care services than in urban settings. We sought to evaluate the relation between patient-reported access to primary care and access bonus payments in urban settings.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, secondary data analysis using Ontario survey and health administrative data from 2013 to 2017.

Systematic scoping review of factors and measures of rurality: toward the development of a rurality index for health care research in Japan.

Background: Rural-urban health care disparities are an important topic in health services research. Hence, developing valid and reliable tools to measure rurality is needed to support high quality research. However, Japan, has no index to measure rurality for health care research.

In a Time of Need: A Grassroots Initiative in Response to PPE Shortage in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Setting: Primary care is the first line of defence in healthcare, particularly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In the London-Middlesex region of Ontario, a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) was identified among primary care physicians (PCPs).

Intervention: With the help of the London-Middlesex Primary Care Alliance, volunteer administrators, physicians and medical students coordinated the acquisition and redistribution of community-donated PPE to PCPs across London-Middlesex.

Comprehensive practice: Normative definition across 3 generations of alumni from a single family practice program, 1985 to 2012.

Objective: To determine the range of services and procedures offered by family physicians who define themselves as comprehensive practitioners and compare responses across 3 generations of alumni of a single family practice program.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting: Western University in London, Ont.

Shifting tides in the emigration patterns of Canadian physicians to the United States: a cross-sectional secondary data analysis.

Background: The relative ease of movement of physicians across the Canada/US border has led to what is sometimes referred to as a 'brain drain' and previous analysis estimated that the equivalent of two graduating classes from Canadian medical schools were leaving to practice in the US each year. Both countries fill gaps in physician supply with international medical graduates (IMGs) so the movement of Canadian trained physicians to the US has international ramifications. Medical school enrolments have been increased on both sides of the border, yet there continues to be concerns about adequacy of physician human resources.

Access to family physicians in southwestern ontario.

Objective: Shortages of family physicians (FPs) have been reported, but accurate data on the scope of this problem are sparse. The study objective was to determine the proportion of the population in southwestern Ontario without access to a regular FP and sources of usual medical care for individuals with and without a regular FP.

Method: Random-digit dialling was used to obtain a stratified, random sample of households from 10 counties in southwestern Ontario, which resulted in 1,387 participants (60.

Conflict on interprofessional primary health care teams--can it be resolved?

Increasingly, primary health care teams (PHCTs) depend on the contributions of multiple professionals. However, conflict is inevitable on teams. This article examines PHCTs members' experiences with conflict and responses to conflict.

Mechanisms for communicating within primary health care teams.

Objective: To explore the types of communication used within primary health care teams (PHCTs), with a particular focus on the mechanisms teams use to promote optimal clinical and administrative information sharing.

Design: A descriptive qualitative study.

Setting: Primary health care teams in Ontario between August 2004 and October 2005.

Women and their partners' perceptions of the key roles of the labor and delivery nurse.

This descriptive qualitative study examined the perspectives of women and their partners regarding the key roles of the labor and delivery nurse during labor and birth.Ten couples were interviewed separately.The data analysis, conducted through independent and team analysis, was both iterative and interpretive.