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Family practice, also called family medicine, is mainly concerned with primary care. This means that doctors who specialize in this field of medicine are the first point of consultation of patients with medical complaints. These doctors are called family physicians or family practitioners. They provide preventive health care and educate patients on health issues. Also, they cater to patients of both sexes and of all ages. Family physicians are trained to care for a patient throughout his or her life cycle, which is why it has been said that family physicians care for a patient “from womb to tomb.”
Moreover, family physicians deal with all common kinds of diseases affecting children and adults. They are thus required to have a general knowledge not just of medicine, but also of pediatrics, surgery, obstetrics, psychiatry and the rest of the medical specialties. Family physicians can see a patient with any medical problem, although their particular expertise is on common diseases.
The field of family medicine also puts more emphasis on the role of the family and other social factors in the care and management of a patient. One such tenet in family practice is that a patient cannot be treated adequately unless his or her family and the social, economic, political and other such factors are taken into account. Hence, training in family medicine would also involve learning family assessment tools over and above the clinical history and physical examination common to all doctors regardless of specialization. Examples are the genogram, APGAR, SCREEM and family life cycle assessment, which aid in the prevention and treatment of a patient’s disease. Essentially, family physicians take a more holistic approach to treating patients.
In general, to be a family physician, one must have completed medical school on top of an undergraduate degree, followed by internship and residency in family medicine. Specifically, in the United States, this would mean 3 years of residency training in family medicine after 4 years of medical school. Furthermore, family physicians may then decide to undergo more training in order to subspecialize in particular subspecialties, such as geriatric medicine, hospice care, adolescent medicine, sports medicine, rural medicine, faculty development, and preventative medicine.
Family physicians may practice medicine solo in their own private clinics, work in conjunction with fellow doctors to form a private group practice, hold clinic in a hospital as a hospital employee, or serve as company or school doctors. Furthermore, family physicians can also opt to teach medical courses in medical school as part of its faculty, give seminars on certain topics in their expertise, do research, get involved in epidemiological studies of diseases, and serve as consultants to medical institutions such as insurance companies, health maintenance organizations (HMO) and non-government organizations (NGO).
Also, they can deliver babies or practice obstetric services, although nowadays fewer family physicians opt to do so due to litigation issues and provider preference.
Compared to most other doctors in other medical specialties, family physicians don’t earn as much. Together with factors such as lesser prestige and higher malpractice premiums, this is one reason there has been a shortage of family physicians.
Family physicians also used to be known as general practitioners (GP). However, in United States in the 1970s, there was a move to limit the term to those physicians who have finished medical school but who have finished training in any specialization. This was because family physicians felt that the term GP was derogatory and did not reflect the further training they underwent in family medicine after medical school. It was then only in 1979 that family medicine, originally referred to as family practice, was established as a separate medical specialty.
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