The Role of a Family Physician

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 programs. The third is the integrative function—facilitating communication between the various specialists involved in a patient's care and, in doing so, integrating the patient into the healthcare system.

Not every physician can become a family physician, because the specialty demands some of the highest levels of empathy, dedication to continuously reviewing an exceptionally broad body of medical knowledge, and, at the same time, offers some of the smallest rewards to one's professional ego. After all, the discipline has never been regarded with the same prestige as cardiology or neurosurgery, for example. For that reason, the only way to truly excel in this field is to fully identify with the role itself.

One of the demanding aspects of the specialty is not only the curriculum required to pass the board certification examination, but also the continuing medical education and the effort required to maintain competence long after becoming a specialist. Unlike many other specialties, where most of the required knowledge is reinforced through daily practice, a significant portion of the theoretical knowledge in family medicine is encountered only rarely in routine clinical work.

These different levels of rigor in training are one of the main reasons why the quality of medical care delivered by family physicians can vary so widely.