The Journal of Family Practice is a peer-reviewed and indexed journal that provides its 95, family physician readers with timely, practical, and evidence-based information that they can immediately put into practice. Research and applied evidence articles, plus patient-oriented departments like Practice Alert, PURLs, and Clinical Inquiries can be found in print and at jfponline.
The Web site, which logs an average of , visitors every month, also offers audiocasts by physician specialists and interactive features like Instant Polls and Photo Rounds Fridayโa weekly diagnostic puzzle. As COVID and our knowledge about it changed, we rewrote policies dozens of times, and each time the staff retrained in a hurry. A national public health emergency allows the Department of Health and Human Services to access and designate funds to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease in response to the emergency.
The declaration also facilitates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention response to an infectious disease emergency. The declaration is essentially a shortcut through the typical bureaucracy that too often gums up the practice of medicine 2 ; it allows for the rapid deployment of funds and personnel to a community affected by an emergency.
Unprecedented change. In the early days, plastic partitions were erected between patients in the hospital, and the scarce supply of N masks was stored in paper bags and baked at low temperatures in ovens overnight. My hospital enacted its incident command response procedures, just as we did the day our community experienced a mass shootingโexcept incident command stayed open for months.
We had to adapt quickly. My practice partners and I spent a Friday afternoon in March writing policies. A policy for our residency practice. A policy for how to cover the residents and faculty when we inevitably got sick.
