International Archives of Medicine Blog
Is family medicine attractive to medical students?
The article by Lakhan et al. illustrates a reality that, although located at a local level, is manifested in many other places in the world: the family medicine is not particularly attractive to medical students. In all countries there seems to be a common link: the lack of prestige of primary care practice, particularly in the specialty of family medicine.
Since the Declaration of Alma Ata, whose celebration of its first thirty years has been held recently, Primary Care has made great progress in most countries. However, this development seems to be nowadays in crisis. And this is reflected in the intended list of places for students of medicine, which often stop at the bottom of family medicine.
Why is this happening? It is difficult to analyze the issue. But it seems clear that Primary Care has immersed into a crisis and that crisis opens the door to change and growth. That is the challenge. It is time to build another primary care, from the refoundation of its radical principles, open to new problems and proposing alternatives to solve efficiently and resolutely the health and social problems of citizens. Interdisciplinary approaches, elements of intrinsic motivation in the work-team, strategies for promoting empowerment in the community in order to avoid excessive dependence on medicine and doctors, providing healthcare professionals the ability to manage their time and work, granting and promoting research programs that target and prioritize the real problems of the Primary Health Care, planning training strategies based on the acquisition of the core values of family medicine, just maybe some of the keys to provide the primary care its deserved site in the global health system.
Dr. Enrique Gavilán Morán
Family Physician, Spain
Member of the editorial board of International Archives of Medicine
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 22:24 Comments (0)
Data of our journal incorporating April 2009
Next are International Archives of Medicine's data up to and including April 2009:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 07:58 Comments (0)
International Archives of Medicine: are we being really international?
Yes we are. When one looks at the country of origin of the articles published by now all continents are well represented. Europe is the leader with 17 articles (8 from UK, 7 from Spain and 2 from Germany). From America came 7 articles (3 from USA, 2 from Brazil, 1 from Mexico and 1 from Canada). Seven articles are from Africa (5 from Egypt, 1 from Congo and 1 from Malawi). And finally, 5 articles are from Asia (2 from China, 1 from India, 1 from Japan and 1 from Thailand). This mix and well balanced source of articles is a reason for satisfaction, since this is one of the objectives of our journal.
Nevertheless we have to keep working to spread the journal. Diffusion in developing countries is specially desirable. I trust our wide editorial board and the open access policy are going to play a key role in this goal.
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 23:57 Comments (0)
Saying good by to 2008, facing 2009.
Dear friends,
Please, allow me some words now that the year is ending.
In 2008 we have successed in launching the journal thanks to the fantastic work done by authors, reviewers and board members. Particulary I want to thank from here all editors who have served as members of the Editorial Board during 2008 and agreed to step down to let other members join. I appreciate very much their service. I also want to thank BMC for their continous support.
Now we face time of consolidation and growing. Our main objective for this year is getting indexed in Medline and Thomson Scientific. To reach this goal we need to increase both the quality and the number of articles published.
I´m sure the new Editorial Board is ready for this challenge.
Best wishes and Merry Christmas,
Dr. Manuel Menéndez
Editor in Chief
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 18:48 Comments (0)
Renewing the editorial board of International Archives of Medicine (Closed)
[Read More]
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 20:44 Comments (0)
Assessing papers on educational interventions
We have just published an article on a health educational intervention (Utilizing video on myocardial infarction).
Most doctors are increasingly involved in education, and they should benefit from being exposed to research in medical education. Nevertheless general medical journals have published little educational research and the methods used in educational research are often different from those most familiar to readers of general medical journals.
On the other hand US government requirements state that federally funded grants and school programs must prove that they are based on scientifically proved improvements in teaching and learning. All new grants must show they are based on scientifically sound research to be funded, and budgets to schools must likewise show that they are based on scientifically sound research. However, the movement in education over the past several years has been toward qualitative rather than quantitative measures. The new legislation comes at a time when researchers are ill trained to measure results or even to frame questions in an empirical way, and when school administrators and teachers are no longer remember or were never trained to prove statistically that their programs are effective.
BMJ published a useful guidelines for evaluating papers on educational interventions View
Do you have any idea to improve the assessment of papers or projects on educational interventions?
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 21:50 Comments (0)
Seeking accesible biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases
We have read with interest the article "Plasmatic level of neurosin predicts outcome of mild cognitive impairment", by Manuel Menendez et al. Distinguishing between age related cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's or other dementing disorders at early stages is really troublesome. MCI represents a transitional stage from health to dementia and biomakers useful to reveal whether a disorder is behind this syndromic diagnosis would be a great step forward in managing these patients. Late-onset AD is largely idiopathic, and has 2 distinct pathological features – extracellular amyloid plaques and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles. Encouragingly, recent studies have also indicated that both Ab42 and tau have significant predictive powers in cases of MCI progressing to AD. In particular, simultaneous measurement of CSF levels of Ab peptides and tau, and expressing these levels as various ratios, help to increase the sensitivity and specificity of prediction. There are also studies with findings that indicate the ability of these markers to tell AD apart from other forms of dementia. CSF Ab and tau could also be promising antecedent biomarkers that could predict the future development of dementia in cognitively normal older adults. But obtaining CSF requires a lumbar punction which migh be a traumatic procedure and a more accesible sample is highly desired.You can find a database with biomarkers of AD at Telemakus AD. In this manuscript, Menendez-Gonzalez et al. reported that measuring plasmatic neurosin concentration is useful to predict conversion of patients diagnosed with MCI and we established the relative risks of developing AD and Dementia with vascular component according with the plasmatic level of neurosin. The prospect of seeing how plasma biomarkers correlate with the clinical findings is an exciting one and we need keep walking through this way. Article in full text.
Posted by Manuel Menéndez González at 08:42 Comments (0)
Recombinant proteins in therapeutics
The discovery, development, production and clinical application of recombinant proteins for therapeutic administration has been an area of intensive scientific and medical effort. Today, many recombinant proteins are part of standard therapy while others still remain in a preliminary study phase.
We feature this debate article which discuss this topic at the time that makes an historical review of the treatment of hemophilia.
Recombinant proteins in therapeutics: haemophilia treatment as an example
Antonio Liras
International Archives of Medicine 2008, 1:4 (28 April 2008)
[Abstract] [Provisional PDF]
There is an universal consensus in recommending the use of recombinant proteins in therapeutics, but why are not more widely used? What is your experience and opinion?
All articles published in International Archives of Medicine are open access.
Posted by Diego Camps at 17:18 Comments (2)