Department of Family Medicine (DFM) residents statewide have another way to complete their program's scholarly requirement and also make a contribution to their professional field.

HelpDesk Answers (HDA), a project of the Family Physicians Inquiries Network (FPIN) Consortium, offers residents the opportunity to co-author evidence-based articles on topics of interest to family physicians.

HDA Process and Benefits

Residents who agree to author an HDA are given an actual clinical question posed by practicing family physicians in the consortium.

The resident then researches the medical literature and, with a faculty co-author, writes a 600-word structured response to the question. These articles are reviewed, edited, and once accepted, published in FPIN's journal Evidence-Based Practice.

Completing an HDA takes about eight to 12 weeks, and articles are usually published within three to six months of acceptance.

Melissa Stiles, MD, the DFM's liaison with FPIN, says the HDA project is a practical way for residents to gain experience with academic publishing and evidence-based medicine. "Not only do residents get the publication they need to fulfill program requirements," she said, "they also have a chance to practice the evidence-based medicine skills they learned in lectures."

Dr. Stiles said that residents have support from medical librarians on campus who have had specific training with FPIN. "In addition, residents get to work with faculty in a different way," she added. "They can see firsthand what an academic physician does outside of clinical practice."

Past Success Inspires Future Training

In the past year and a half, approximately 10 residents in the Madison program have completed HDAs. Topics have included:

• How often can proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) be successfully withdrawn from
  patients with GERD?
• Fetal fibronectin as a predictor of preterm delivery in women with symptoms of preterm labor; and
• The potential long-term risks of proton pump inhibitors.

Dr. Stiles extends her thanks to two clinicians at the Wingra Family Medical Center—Lee Dresang, MD, and Connie Kraus, Pharm D—who served as faculty co-authors for numerous Evidence-Based Practice articles.

Building on this success, Dr. Stiles is now conducting training sessions to encourage faculty and residents statewide to participate in the project. She gave a presentation to Eau Claire faculty in March, and will speak to the Wausau and Fox Valley faculty in May. Later, she will conduct similar training sessions for residents at those sites.

More About FPIN

The FPIN Consortium was developed as a grassroots effort to make evidence-based family medicine and clinical scholarship more accessible to family physicians in clinical practice.

The DFM was one of the seven founding member institutions when FPIN incorporated in 2001. FPIN is now an international consortium with 70 organizational members and 120 residency programs.