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Annals of Family Medicine 4:455-459 (2006)
© 2006 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.
doi: 10.1370/afm.556
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Family Medicine’s Identity: Being Generalists in a Specialist Culture?

Howard F. Stein, PhD

Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Okla

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Howard F. Stein, PhD, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma, Health Sciences Center, 900 NE 10th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, howard-stein{at}ouhsc.edu

Family medicine has been in conflict about whether it is a specialty or a generalist discipline. Although for a time the family was offered as a solution to family medicine being marginalized in biomedicine, a more biomedical focus prevailed. As a result, the practice of family medicine came more to resemble the world of biomedicine despite an insistence on the discipline’s distinctiveness. Ways to avoid identity pitfalls in the future might be to seek solutions that do not promise to solve our identity problem once and for all, to refrain from adopting generalized slogans that do not encourage critical thinking, to practice what we preach, to accept that specialization is part of the American cultural ethos, and to embrace reflective practice.

Key Words: Family practice • social identification • culture • social values • conflict (psychology) • generalism • specialties, medical




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TRACK Comments:

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Generalists and specialists.
Bery J. Engebretsen MD
Annals of Family Medicine, 3 Oct 2006 [Full text]
Thoughts on Identity Formation
Virginia A Aita
Annals of Family Medicine, 4 Oct 2006 [Full text]
Generalists are special too!
Randall Longenecker
Annals of Family Medicine, 8 Oct 2006 [Full text]
Family Medicine: Identity Consolidation?
Kathy A. Zoppi
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The Role of a Generalist
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