Medicine has evolved significantly over the past few decades. Technological progress has greatly improved physicians’ ability to establish diagnoses and provide increasingly less invasive treatments. Consider, for example, the advances made in cardiology and cardiac surgery over the last 20 years—and how many patients today benefit from procedures such as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). Only a few years ago, some of these patients would have been considered in

The term family medicine defines treating the patient while taking his family context into account. Treating several family members in the same practice can be an advantage, but also a disadvantage. Possible conflicts or delicate situations can arise when the people responsible for the patient are not the ones most emotionally involved or closest to him. Most of the time, a patient who needs medical support from us will also need emotional and financial support from his famil

Most of us have heard this term repeated over and over: good communication, not just in a medical context. How do we establish good communication with the patient and, more importantly, how do we objectively evaluate whether it's actually effective? Because of our own bias, most doctors believe they have excellent communication, while many patients feel misunderstood or unheard. So how can we analyze this discrepancy objectively? We probably need to ask ourselves what exactly

The role of the family physician has remained relatively unchanged over the years: to care for both the acute and chronic health problems of patients, whether they are physical or psychological in nature. A family physician fulfills several essential functions. The first is the curative function—treating diseases comprehensively rather than focusing on a single organ or condition. The second is the preventive function—playing a central role in all preventive healthcare progra