The role of a medical faculty in reorganizing family practice to meet current community needs.

There exists a crisis in the delivery of medical services, particularly by family doctors of whom there is an apparent shortage.A STUDY OF FAMILY PRACTICE IN KINGSTON, ONTARIO, AND IN THE NEARBY COUNTRYSIDE INDICATES THREE CRITICAL NEEDS IN FAMILY PRACTICE: professional assistants for the family doctors, efficient office facilities and new methods of delivering family medical care in rural areas. The Faculty of Medicine at Queen's University has involved itself in a study of these matters and is developing a program to help solve them, by research into the nature of the problems and into methods for alleviating them, by keeping practising physicians informed through research reports and the continuing education program of the Medical School, by the development of pilot projects, and by the evaluation of new services aimed at these problems, independently launched by physicians in the community. Pilot projects to date include two designed to study the use of registered nurses as doctor assistants and another which involves the organization and operation of a university-sponsored community health centre. Last, but by no mean least, the Provincial Government is continually briefed on all these activities.