A View from Cheyenne Mountain: Generation III’s Perspective of Keystone III

Erika Bliss; Kara Cadwallader; Terrence E. Steyer; Deborah S. Clements; Jennifer E. DeVoe; Kenneth Fink; Marina Khubesrian; Paul Lyons; Elizabeth Steiner; David Weismiller

doi:10.1370/afm.1606

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"A View from Cheyenne Mountain: Generation III's Perspective of Keystone III" Comments
Cynda A. Johnson

Published on: 13 March 2014

Published on: (13 March 2014)
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"A View from Cheyenne Mountain: Generation III's Perspective of Keystone III" Comments
Cynda A. Johnson, President and Founding Dean
An invitation to post comments on "A View from Cheyenne Mountain: Generation III's Perspective of Keystone III," and its three accompanying editorials got my attention, probably because it brought to mind my disappointment at not being invited to Keystone III. That was back in 2000 when I was chair of Family Medicine at the University of Iowa. I have since served as Dean of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina Unive...
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An invitation to post comments on "A View from Cheyenne Mountain: Generation III's Perspective of Keystone III," and its three accompanying editorials got my attention, probably because it brought to mind my disappointment at not being invited to Keystone III. That was back in 2000 when I was chair of Family Medicine at the University of Iowa. I have since served as Dean of the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and for the last six years as President and Founding Dean of a new medical school with a research intensive curriculum, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. So added to the myriad of positions held by the authors of Generation III, 10 family physicians are currently deans of LCME-accredited medical schools.
My contribution to this dialogue is very specific: I am pleased that in all of these well written editorials as well as the initial article, the authors refer to themselves as family physicians. It is who we are--at our core. We are not generic PCPs or even primary care doctors, more and more of whom are not physicians. We may practice variations of primary care medicine or we may not--but we are trained as family physicians and even when not practicing medicine at all, we are family physicians. We need this distinction to be clear to all our stakeholders: patients, politicians, insurance carriers. My message is this. "I am a well-educated physician; I have completed specialty medical training in family medicine. I am trained to care for people of all ages, diagnosing and treating conditions of all kinds."
We must be succinct and unified in our message. Only then might we choose to explain, "and I have chosen to focus my practice on..." Let us take back our specialty.
Competing interests: None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.