INTERNET RESOURCES FOR FAMILY PHYSICIANS

PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED The Internet has experienced tremendous growth over the past few years and has many resources in the field of family medicine. However, many family physicians remain unaware of how the I nternet can be used to enhance their practice and of how to gain acces s to this powerful tool. OBJECTIVE OF PROGRAM To characterize componen ts of the Internet, to explore how family physicians can use the Inter net to enhance practice, and to increase awareness of how to gain acce ss to Internet sites relevant to family medicine.MAIN COMPONENTS OF TH E PROGRAM An on-line search through the World Wide Web was conducted u sing multiple search engines including Lycos, WebCrawler, OpenText and Yahoo as well as a conventional MEDLINE search of Internet publicatio ns for the past 5 years. A website containing an evolving selection of resources can he found at http://dfcm18.med.utoronto.ca/anthes/hpgdfc m1.htm. CONCLUSION The Internet has useful applications and resources for family physicians including rapid communication between physicians , access to medical literature, continuing medical education programs, and lists of patient support and discussion groups.