Relationship Science for Building Meaning and Purpose in Primary Care: Connecting to Core Principles of Family Medicine

Context: This presentation comes from a book in progress by the presenters that connects the theoretical, empirical, and organizational frameworks of relationship science with the core principles of Family Medicine.

Objective: Our goal in this presentation, and in our writing project, is to identify the relational and communicative processes of how family medicine clinicians and researchers do what we do.

Study Design and Analysis: We do not present an empirical study, but instead connect across theoretical and empirical foundations.

Setting and Dataset: We systematically assess literature and programs that illustrate fundamental aspects of vision and implementation in the interdisciplinary study of relationship science and in family medicine research.

Population Studied: Foundations come from published literature and from collective leadership over time in both relationship science and Family Medicine.

Intervention/Instrument: Our presentation provides a comprehensive overview of problems and opportunities.

Outcome Measures: Content areas in the book and presentation come from consensus among the authors developed in strategically organized vision and implementation writing sessions.

Results: We describe the need to build (or rebuild) greater meaning & purpose in primary care. This extends to clients, practitioners and stakeholders. We connect the core principles and values of Family Medicine as relationship-based. We articulate how the discovery, synthesis, training, and practice of relationship science is core to Family Medicine scholarship. We describe relationship science and the mind / body connection. We identify pathways through which communication and relationships predict better healthcare and decisions. We articulate ‘ways of being’ in Family Medicine that gets back to the human heart of understanding and argue that these ‘ways of being’ can be adopted by academics and researchers too.

Conclusions: We map out positive disruptor opportunities that give hope for the future. We map out opportunities for transformative leadership of the vision and strategic implementation of relationship science to build meaning and purpose in clinical practice, teaching, and research.