It’s cliché that good family doctors are approachable and even friendly. Since your family doctor probably less formal (deliberately so), and she takes care of almost every issue no matter how mundane it may seem, you might think that what she does is easy, less sophisticated or less deliberate than what other doctor’s do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s what is really going on:
- Family Medicine is intellectually demanding. No day is a repeat and no patient is the same for a traditional family doctor. Even with a lot of experience when simple become nearly mindless, ten to twenty percent of your family doctor’s visits push their minds to the maximum.
- Their understanding of emotional, social, and family dynamics is not an accident. It’s studied, trained, and practiced and from the beginning of your family doctor’s career until the end of it. A really good family doctor has to know what you want and need even before you do.
- Family doctors are taught to know and keep up to date on what other doctors should be doing. In fact, besides knowing primary care medicine, we must understand the “Best Practices”[1] and key developments of almost every other specialty- or at least update ourselves really fast. If your PCP doesn’t know what other doctors should be doing, she doesn’t know when she needs a specialist’s help. Also, if she is ignorant, you might be sent on a ‘hamster wheel’ of unending referrals that cost you your health and hour life savings. We will talk about how referrals work, and what you should demand before your care gets ‘farmed out.’ For now, it’s crucial for you to understand that your family doctor should be capable of critiquing the evaluation, opinion, and treatment rendered by almost any other specialist.
In summary, a top of the line family doctor is one of the most up-to-date, intellectually nimble, and emotionally flexible doctors that you could have. She is the medical custodian of infinitely complex patients and their lives, meeting them wherever they are medically, psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, financially, all of the time. Maybe it’s time to start thinking of family doctors as the stewards the health of America’s families; the custodian of the most important thing in any person’s life.
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