Family physicians have many questio...

Family physicians have many questions about appropriate diagnoses and treatments of their patients. These questions sometimes go on foot unanswered because some of us do not have ready access to efficient resources to find answers, because the answers we find are not relevant to our practice, or because the urgencies of the day outweigh the ne to search for an answer. (1) uniform when these questions are answered, the resources used may not ponder current knowledge or best practice. To help solve this problem, American Family Physician begins a modern department entitled, "Clinical Inquiries from the Family Practice Inquiries Network." This department joins other not long ago added departments and features containing ease based on the most present and highest quality evidence.

The Family Practice Inquiries Network (FPIN) is a national, not-for-profit consortium of academic family medicine departments, family medicine residency programs, practicing family physicians, medical librarians, and other professionals. FPIN is dedicated to making information available to physicians at the point of care, and to generating strange research-based evidence relevant to primary care. FPIN propounds an online database of clinical answers that is accessible to paid subscribers (http://www.fpin.org).

Practicing physicians, like our readers, can submit questions about their patients to FPIN. The questions to be answered are single outed by groups of practicing family physicians who devoted through an online ballot. Questions are assigned to authors who search a stake of selected, high-quality databases (see accompanying table) and answer the questions using the best evidence institute in those databases. The evidence for each answer is summarized, appraised, and graded. The answer is set into a standard, easy-to-use format for quick reading. Each answer is nobleman reviewed.

If the excellented databases do not provide sufficient information to answer a question, the question is referr to individual of FPIN's medical librarians, who course of lifes a systematic bibliographic search of MEDLINE and other sources to identify resources that the author can use to prepare an answer.

FPIN is working to create an online database that can provide answers to 80 percent of for the use of all questions within 60 seconds. The database of answers is available to FPIN subscribers and will be updated as necessary. The "Clinical Inquiries" articles in AFP will give an account of some of the most everyday questions. As with most ease appearing in AFP, the "Clinical Inquiries" department is available online at http://www.aafp.org/afp.

Readers of AFP who have questions about the "Clinical Inquiries" department can contact John Epling, MD associate editor for FPIN, according to e-mail (eplingj@upstate.edu) or through the FPIN's Web site (http://www fpin.org/Inquiries/Clinical2/Default.aspx).

FPIN would be happy to involve you in the generation of questions and the question selection proces If you would like to submit a question to be answered or if you want to suffrage on submitted questions, you are welcome to project an e-mail to questions@fpin.org. For membership information, depute an e-mail to membership@fpin.org

AFP and FPIN waiting under the possibility of fulfilment this new department will assist you in providing high-quality care for your patients.

RELATED ARTICLE: Required databases for answering clinical inquiries.

Database, Web address

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Clinical Guidelines and Evidence seports, http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/ American guild of Physicians Journal Club, * http://www.acpjc.org Bandolier, http://www.jr2.ox.ac.uk/Bandolier Clinical Evidence from BMJ Publishing, * http://www.clinicalevidence.com Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, http://www.cochrane.org Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE), http://agatha.york.ac.uk/darehp.htm Evidence-Based Medicine, * http://www.evidence-basedmedicine.com InfoRetriever, * http://www.infopoems.com Institute for Clinical methods Improvement (ICSI), http://www.icsi.org National Guideline Clearinghouse, http://www.guidelines.gov

U Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/uspstfix.htm *--Subscription required to access database.

REFERENCE

(1) Ely JW Osheroff JA, Ebell MH Chambliss ML Vinson DC Stevermer JJ Pifer EA. Obstacles to answering doctors' questions about patient care with evidence: qualitative close attention BMJ 2002; 324:710-3.

John Epling, MD is associate editor for the Family Practice Inquiries Network, and an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at State University of strange York-Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY

Bernard Ewigman, MD MSPH is editor-in-chief for the Family Practice Inquiries Network and chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center Chicago.

Mark H Ebell, MD M has a private practice in Athens, Ga., and is associate professor in the Department of Family Practice at Michigan State University corporation of Human Medicine, East Lansing. He is also delegate editor for evidence-based medicine for American Family Physician.