http://www.fammedsa.com/

 

 

http://www.ssfcm.org/

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) maintains a set of very high quality links to clinical resources on the web (http://www.aafp.org/sites/longlist. html).

Primary Care Internet Guide (http://www.uib.no/isf/guide/guide.htm)
provides a comprehensive list of primary care related resources.

Other useful Internet resources for the family physicians can be found at (http://www.lotusnet.org/it/reperio/eng/familymd.htm)

Other important sites for family physicians can be found at the World Health Organization (http://www.who.ch/),

World Organization of Family Doctors (http:// www.wonca.org/),

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc. gov/cdc.html) and National Institutes of Health (http://www.nih.gov/).

Other sites that offer links to Medline include Dr. Felix's Free Medline Page (http://www.docnet.org.uk/drfelix/),

Healthgate (http://www.healthgate.com/) and (http://www.healthy.net/).

AAFP Website (http://www.aafp.org/) has practical information useful for family physicians and other physicians. The site includes review articles, CME materials, policy and practice management guidelines, and other useful links.

Other valuable sites are the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (http://stfm.org/), (www. familypractice.com),

Canadian College of Family Physicians (http://www.cfpc.ca/ index.htm),

Royal College of General Practitioners (http://www.rcgp.org.uk/)

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (http://www.racgp.org.au/).

Medscape (http://www.medscape.com/ home/cmecenter/cmecenter.html) offers thousands of free CME online by specialty and topic. It also provides on line listings
of medical conferences with summaries of many medical meetings. Other online
CME sites  also available free of charge are at (http://www.cmecourses.com/),
(http://www.cmegateway.com/), (http://www. cmeweb.com/), (http://www.mdconsult.com/)
and (http://www.medcases.com/Interactive clinical case presentation is a growing trend on the Web. Text supported by graphics, video clips and feedback heightens the learning process. Interactive patient sites can be accessed at Medconnect (http://www.medconnect.com/finalhtm/intacedu.htm)

Marshall University School of Medicine (http://medicus.marshall.edu/ mainmenu.htm).
Family physicians in Saudi Arabia are now able to link on to many online medical journals. Many publishers offer free full text versions, while others need subscriptions or offer limited full text. Family physicians could potentially find useful information in family medicine journals as well as in general journals (e.g. the British Medical Journal, JAMA, Lancet and New EnglandJournal of Medicine, etc). Some of family medicine/practice journals available online are listed in Table 1.

Free journal abstracts via e-mail, a very useful way of keeping up with the growing volume of important medical literature of interest are provided by many medical journals. A useful site that categorizes journal collections by specialty can be located at (http://www.medjet.net/).           

 Table 1: Family Medicine Journals available on the Web

There are Websites designed to give collections of medical journal instructions to authors
for the submission of manuscripts. This service is offered at (http://www. mco.edu/lib/instr/libinsta.html). Arab Doctor's Net (http://www.arabdoctors net. net/newjournal.htm) provides names and addresses of a variety of medical journals published in the Arab world.

A range of medical calculators is accessible on the Internet to help health professionals in their day-to-day practice. A variety of medical calculators on a wide range of topics such as epidemiology, body mass index, pregnancy, diabetes/insulin, and breast cancer risk is available at (http://www.medic8.com/medicaltools.htm).

MEDICAL EDUCATION

The use of the Internet is a potential source to support for the improvement of medical education. The work of medical schools is to strive to produce competent physicians capable of being life-long learners, educator-communicators, clinicians, researchers and managers.24 Medical informatics is an important support for the diverse roles of physicians 25 and should be given an adequate place on the medical school curriculum. A medical student who has basic medical informatics skills can access his college curriculum, syllabus, educational materials, timetable and other available resources to help his education. Many medical with varying levels of accessibility are now on the web, offering a diversity of content.  

It is essential for family practice residents to acquire the essential medical informatics skills for their day-to-day practice. AAFP recommend curriculum guidelines in medical informatics and computer applications at (http://www.aafp.org/edu/ guide/rep288.html).26 The guidelines outline the essential knowledge, skills and attitudes to be mastered by the residents and the way they can be utilized. It is important that every medical school and family practice residency should teach its medical students and residents medical informatics competencies including the Internet tools for accessing, and how to appraise and manage medical information critically.

Many Web sites today offer a variety of information through different residency programs or vocational schemes. Information about family practice residencies/general practice scheme programs and departments of family medicine/general practice and primary health care can be accessed through any search engine or directly through relevant organizations such as AAFP.      

EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE

Since the application of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is a necessary component of modern family practice, the Web with its huge medical database is a potential source of facilitating that practice. By adapting Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters (POEMs) in reviewing articles on common primary care problems, family physicians would effectively change their practice.27,28

Best Web sites for EBM can be accessed through the Journal Club of American College of Physicians (http://www.acponline.org/journals/acpjc/jcmenu.htm) and EBM of the United Kingdom Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (http://cebm.jr2.ox.ac.uk). Two other important Web sites for EBM are the Journal of Family Practice POEMs (http://www.jfponline.com/) and the Cochrane Collaboration Library (http:// www.medlib.com) or (http://cochrane.hcn.net.au/).

These sites contain peer-reviewed abstracts from biomedical journals scrutinized for the research quality and level of evidence. The abstracts also include summaries of evidence-based articles with commentaries by clinical experts. Principles of EBM are used in the abstracts to support the evidence by reporting important findings such as number needed to treat, number needed to harm, relative and absolute risk reduction, odds ratio and confidence interval.

PATIENT INFORMATION

Although there are substantial numbers of patient education materials on the Web sites, there is a dearth of Arabic materials. The provision of health care by family physicians in Saudi Arabia is mostly to patients whose primary language is Arabic. There is therefore a need to have reliable patient education materials in Arabic. Family physicians are ideally placed to develop, maintain and update suitable Web-based information materials for their patients and their families. Some drug companies, health magazines and health-related Arabic Web sites provide a variety of patient information materials. Data on the reliability of the health information posted on these sites are unfortunately not available.

Since family physicians have to provide personal care to a culturally diverse group of patients, education materials should also be available in the languages that are commonly encountered in family practices in Saudi Arabia. Several Web sites provide multilingual patient education resources. Multilingual information about immunization and vaccination can be found at (http://www.immunize.org/). Information at this site is reviewed for reliability and accuracy by the Centers for Disease Control. Other Web sites that offer multilingual patient information materials are located at (http://www.familydoctor. org/) as well as (http://www.drpen.com/).

Some of the online health resources useful for patients are accessed at the AAFP's Health Information for Patients (http://familydoctor.org/), Medical Matrix: Patient
Education (http://www.medmatrix.org/_SPages/Patient_Education.asp), MEDLINEplus (www.nlm.nih.gov/ medlineplus), the Internet Drug Index (http://www.rxlist.com/), HealthAnswers (http://www.healthanswers.com/), and Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources (http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/hardin-www/md.html).