Family Medicine is a medical specialty that provides continuing, comprehensive health care to individuals and families. In order to maintain board certification, Family Physicians must complete at least 150 hours of Continuing Medical Education every three years, and pass a comprehensive board certification exam every seven years.

What is Cool About Being a Family Physician?

1. Challenging, interesting and usually long standing patients and their families.



2. Going to work and never knowing what might happen during the day or the night.



3. Watching patients change and develop over time.



4. "Being there" for patients in need.



5. Patients teaching me whats "important" in life.


• Interactions with patients that are unique to practioners who develop bonds with family and patient over many illnesses and through varied interactions. We are people doctors!



• Getting to know one's patients well and hopefully over a long time. Also the whole notion of tying together all the pieces of each individual's health. The longer I do this the more convinced I am of it's importance, despite all the external forces at work to fragment care.



• The multidisciplinary and multicultural nature of medicine thrills me and makes me dream about becoming the best family physician I can be. As an aspirant family physician to be I think that Family medicine is a versatile field that focuses on serving most of the needs of the patients that it serves. Through history it seems like the changing demands of our patient population have shaped family medicine so it can best serve its surrounding community. Family medicine simply inspires me to become part of the fine tradition of intellectuals who not only seek to be trained to be the best in multiple fields of expertise but also to serve a multi-cultural society so that they can best serve the patients they serve.



• The diversity of the field and the diversity of the people I work with and treat.

What do Family Physicians do?

• Family Physicians care for people of both genders and all ages.



• Family Physicians diagnose and treat 90 percent of all patient problems, including biological and mental health concerns.



• Family Physicians treat conditions of all organ systems rather than limiting their practice to specific organ systems.



• Family Physicians treat the whole patient, taking into account all medical, social and mental health concerns of the individual.



• Family Physicians practice disease prevention and health maintenance in addition to treating illness.

Why are Family Physicians important?

Data has shown that treatment by Family Physicians results in:

• Quality of care equal to specialty care



• High patient satisfaction



• More cost-effective use of hospitals, testing, procedures, and expensive technology