The BWAFP”s corner

A. Hamaoui, MD

It is now early January of the year 2000. The festivities all around the world showed just how global we have become. The net has finally become a reality, and it is now on its way to change the way we do things in everyway.

During the last decade our chapter has persisted struggling, drudging, and plodding to make us all family. Results have been at best hopeful. We have been able now to establish a regular schedule of activities mainly around open Board meetings:

♥♥♥            Summer Board meetings are usually at Le Refuge, a French restaurant, held in June to install the newly elected Board and also hosts the BWAFP Award Ceremony. The report by the COD delegates is also part of the agenda.

♥♥♥      Fall Board meetings are usually on the Sunday after Labor Day and are picnics for all medical students and residents to mingle with family physicians in our area. Names for “Family Doctor of the Year” and “Educator of the Year” are suggested.

♥♥♥      Winter Board meetings are organized by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in early January and are CME events. During these meetings we elect our delegates to the Congress of Delegates of the NYSAFP and our committee members. We also prepare resolutions to the COD.

♥♥♥      Spring Board meetings are hosted by the New York Medical College in late March and are dialogues with the family practice interest groups about careers in Family Practice. The agenda includes the yearly report.

♥♥♥      Early Summer Board meetings. Location has varied. These are Election Day and dinner meetings sometime in late May. We are hoping that these meetings be hosted by the residency programs in our area, or alternatively by other Departments of Family Practice in the area.

We also have been a presence in the NYSAFP Lake Placid Winter Weekend in February and the Congress of Delegates in June, as well as the AAFP annual meetings in September.

It seems that by hook or by crook slowly the chapter has kept itself afloat. The academic centers have been influential in keeping it alive, but we are looking for ways to bring in all family physician members and their families.

To this end we have established our own webpage, www.bwafp.org. This is an interactive web page with an easy click to email us any comment or suggestion. We ask all of our members to hit our site and try it out. The newsletter and website are updated quarterly for the time being and we are willing to publish any material from our members.

We are building a “Find a Family Doc”  page and are asking our members who wish to put up office addresses and phone numbers and other info to please send in the information at their convenience. No charges apply for members. We expect that the net will permit us all to communicate more with each other. We are developing a listserve for the exchange of ideas. Please email us if you wish to join.

The chapter has also been instrumental in sponsoring ALSO® courses, the Advance Life Support in Obstetrics, in the downstate area in collaboration with the Academy and the residency programs. The chapter has also been actively supportive of full privileging of scope of practice in our area.

I would truly like to see our chapter finally find its own way of making a difference.

I wish all of our members and their families many moments of joy and happiness, and that health and wealth are everlasting to all in the next millennium.