News from C. Frank Webber Lectureship

Family physicians gather to advance family medicine

Almost 350 physicians, residents and students gathered at the Hilton Austin Airport to attend this year’s C. Frank Webber Lectureship and Interim Session March 14-15, 2008. The busy weekend was filled with CME lectures and TAFP business meetings.

CME topics mirrored the full scope of issues facing practicing family physicians, ranging from lectures on identifying and treating metabolic syndrome to secondary stroke prevention, plus an ethics lecture on what to do when you receive a letter from the Texas Medical Board.

TAFP hosted the Texas Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Students Saturday, which combined lectures specifically tailored for future family physicians with an interactive resident-led Residency and Procedures fair. Morning lecture topics concentrated on the business of family medicine and the skills needed to sustain a practice. That afternoon, students and residents switched gears as residency programs from around Texas showed students the full scope of family medicine through hands-on procedure demonstrations. Students practiced simulations of joint injections, ultrasounds, perineal repairs and others.

During TAFP commission, committee, section and task force meetings, TAFP members discussed topics of interest to family physicians. During these meetings, the Commission on Public Health, Clinical Affairs and Research discussed the low reimbursement and high cost family physicians face when storing and administering vaccines, and requested that TAFP use its existing partnerships with other primary care specialty organizations to draw attention to these difficulties. The Commission also awarded Juan Campos, M.D., the Public Health Award for his dedication to improving the health and welfare of the citizens of the upper Rio Grande Valley.

TAFP would like to congratulate other award recipients named at the meeting of the Commission on Membership and Member Services. John Paul Ramsay, M.D., a solo family physician in Fredericksburg, was named the 2008-09 TAFP Physician of the Year, and Robert Echols, M.D., of Kilgore, and John Green, Jr., M.D., of Ballinger, were named Physicians Emeriti. All TAFP award recipients will be honored at the Annual Session Business and Awards Lunch in Houston, Saturday, July 19. Other actions taken by the Commission on Membership and Member Services were to recommend the launch of a membership recruitment campaign anchored by the distribution of the Academy in Action advocacy DVD to non-member family physicians, and to approve funds for the August 15-16 TAFP Leadership and Legislative Conference in Austin.

The TAFP Board of Directors meeting concluded the weekend where board members heard reports and recommendations from TAFP’s committees, commissions and sections. Among the actions taken by the Board were decisions to approve a new slate of TAFP officers and support the annual TAFP service project, Physicians with Heart, benefiting the San José Clinic in Houston.

Mark your calendars now to join TAFP for the 2009 C. Frank Webber Lectureship at the Hilton Austin Airport March 13, 2009. Also plan to join TAFP for its largest symposium, the 59th Annual Session and Scientific Assembly, July 16-20, 2008 at the Westin Galleria hotel in Houston. In the fall, TAFP will host the 2008 Primary Care Summit, Oct. 17-19 at the Westin Oaks hotel in Houston.