Predictions for a shortage of family practice doctors are adding to the impetus for a broader role for nurse practitioners, who are already the main non-physician providers of primary care.
Hospital-based family practice maternity clinics are seen as one way to encourage new family doctors to deliver babies when they launch their own careers.
A family practice maternity clinic, the thinking goes, is more likely to meet those requirements than a model in which residents learn through stints on the obstetric care ward.
Standards also require training in internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, family practice, surgery, psychiatry, emergency medicine, radiology, preventive medicine and public health.
