RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Family Medicine’s Identity: Being Generalists in a Specialist Culture?
JF The Annals of Family Medicine
JO Ann Fam Med
FD American Academy of Family Physicians
SP 455
OP 459
DO 10.1370/afm.556
VO 4
IS 5
A1 Stein, Howard F.
YR 2006
UL http://www.annfammed.org/content/4/5/455.abstract
AB 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.