As a recent graduate of the Duke University Family Medicine Residency Program, I was encouraged to see the article on Duke's “retooling” of the Family Medicine Residency. Duke has trained the third highest number of practicing family physicians in North Carolina , and their impact on caring for our citizens is significant.

Your reference to the Family Medicine crisis has not been overlooked by our specialty, and several years ago the American Academy of Family Physicians initiated a program to transform and renew the specialty to make it viable for the future. The results of this endeavor are explained in the publications on the Future of Family Medicine project available at http://futurefamilymed.org. We endeavor to create a personal medical home for all patients, not just the underserved, urban, or indigent.

Every patient deserves a family physician.

You also reference the North Carolina Academy of Family Practitioners. This organization does not exist. The North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians is the largest single specialty organization in the state. We are not just practitioners and prefer to be referred to as physicians, since we are. This is in contrast to Duke's emphasis on training mid-level providers who are often practitioners. Each member of the Academy is a residency-trained, board-certified family physician specialist. We must sit for a board exam every seven years and were the first specialty to require a board exam. We must maintain our credentials yearly.

As we strive to care for patients, we must learn new ways of practicing in an electronic age with increasing overhead and decreasing reimbursement. It is rather like trying to change four tires of a car while driving down the road at 90 miles an hour. Dr. Michener has the luxury of stopping the car and picking out his tires. We in the community do not.

It would be a travesty for Duke to abandon its historical position to provide care in the form of family physicians for North Carolina 's citizens. Thank you for your attention to this important issue and for allowing me to express my opinions.

Sincerely,
Michelle F. Jones, MD, HS'99, FAAFP
Wilmington Health Associates Family Practice
Wilmington, N.C.
President-elect, North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians