Casper Faculty Publish Article in National Publication for Family Medicine Physicians

The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) recently published a 48-page article written by three faculty members at the University of Wyoming Family Medicine Residency Program in Casper. 

The article, written by Assistant Professor Jaime Hornecker, Clinical Assistant Professor Karlynn Sievers and Associate Program Director Brian Veauthier, appeared in the October issue of FP Essentials, a continuing AAFP medical education publication that reaches thousands of family medicine physicians throughout the nation. 

FP Essentials periodically seeks proposals from family medicine physicians to write articles that provide the most recent information on common medical topics. In August 2014, following the review of proposals submitted by other physicians around the country, FP Essentials editors chose the Casper faculty to write an evidence-based article on acute coronary syndrome (ACS), the common medical term for heart attack. 

The three authors spent the next 15 months preparing the article, titled “Acute Coronary Syndrome.”

“We often deal with ACS in the hospital and the clinic, and we have insight into the challenges of managing and treating ACS in remote and rural settings, which is why we chose that topic,” Veauthier says. “FP Essentials is an important tool in the medical community, so we were eager to provide valuable, evidence-based material providers can use in their own practice.”

“FP Essentials is a very comprehensive publication, and it is focused on medical topics that family medicine physicians encounter every day in practice,” Sievers adds. “Family physicians can use the information provided for continuing medical education, and it provides key resources and tools to help doctors prepare for the board exam.”

Physicians reading the article have the opportunity to complete pretest and posttest question-and-answer sections to review their knowledge of treating and managing ACS.

“As providers, we must ask ourselves who will benefit from ACS treatment and intervention,” Veauthier says. “Aggressive blood thinners and/or undergoing heart catheterization can result in success, but are not without a measure of risk. Physicians must balance the benefits of treatment with the potential risks before moving forward.”

In February 2015, the faculty team submitted a draft manuscript to the publication’s medical editors. At that point, Veauthier worked with Sievers and Hornecker to provide additional information and make necessary edits and revisions to the article. Following eight more months of teamwork and extensive research, the article was ready for publication.

“Working on this article was a collaborative effort,” Hornecker says. “We are honored to have made this contribution to family medicine and to be recognized by the American Academy of Family Physicians for those efforts.”