AAFP President-elect Sterling Ransone, Jr, MD, says Flu Season Could Test FPs, Again

Incoming American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) president Sterling Ransone, Jr, MD, has been talking with AAFP members about the potential challenges to come during the 2021-2022 influenza season. One of the primary concerns he hears is about a feared drain on clinic and staff resources.

The reemergence of seasonal respiratory viruses this year will be exacerbated by the widespread opening of schools, Ransone said in an interview with Patient Care Online, and will be compounded in states where masking and other appropriate health measures have waned. "We're incredibly worried that RSV will take hold, and then we'll have a tripledemic—potentially the Delta variant of COVID, influenza, and RSV, all hitting at approximately the same time."

Ransone, a third-generation family physician, has practiced rural medicine for more than 20 years and said that some of the patient management difficulties the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust into high relief are magnified in outlying communities, where there is very little tolerance in the system for overload.

His parting message to US family physicians—to all clinicians in frontline care—is 3-fold and begins with, "Look out for yourself." Ransone's thoughts on the flu season to come, strategies to work through it, and the other 2 elements of his message to clinicians are topics of this short video.

Sterling Ransone, Jr, MD, is the president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians and a clinical assistant professor of medicine and population health at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. He also serves as physician practice director at Riverside Fishing Bay Family Practice in Deltaville, VA.