FAMILY MEDICINE / GP: CHALLENGES AND PRINCIPLES
Nerio Enrique Romero Gonzalez
Full professor (Emeritus), Universidad del Zulia (LUZ) (Venezuela) Academic Numerary, Zulia State Academy of History (Venezuela) Author: “Practicing Comprehensive Family Medicine. Fundamentals, Tools and Cases" (2022)
By: Nerio Enrique Romero, MD
"A well-trained family doctor can respond appropriately to most of the health problems that most people have most of the time", said a working paper of a joint WHO-WONCA conference held in Ontario, Canada, in November 1994. We love this statement; it contains an inspirational definition of one important dimension of comprehensiveness.
Thirty years later, is it possible? Has it been possible, so far?
Right now, family medicine faces serious challenges. The traditional defy, full of difficulties, of developing the specialty in most countries and making good family doctors accessible everywhere, is not alone. Now, family medicine also faces a crisis in countries that already have the most developed and well-funded healthcare systems.
Should we believe it or not, access is now an issue in many of these latter countries. Demographics, ever-growing demands for primary care services, and a relative shortage of family doctors put massive pressure on first-line systems. Less time for patients, inaccessible appointments, longer waiting times, physician burnouts and dropouts, and patients complaints are just some of the most evident results of this crisis.
In several countries, this is already a political issue. Although solutions for the whole problem are beyond the field of our specialty, access is probably our biggest challenge: how to increase it without affecting the quality of care, especially in terms of comprehensiveness and continuity? Whatever the decisions (political, normative, economic, organizational, etc.) in any health system, we family doctors must take special care of these core principles of our discipline, both in education and practice.
You are invited to know our book "Practicing Comprehensive Family Medicine. Fundamentals, Tools, and Cases". It will be helpful in practice, and also at the school of medicine, the residence, and continuous medical education. We can find it worldwide, printed or in digital format (Kindle e-book) through the Amazon platforms.
Go get it, and please encourage your colleagues, residents, and students to get it!
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(You can also get the original Spanish version of this book, entitled "Integralidad en Acción. Fundamentos y herramientas de la Medicina Familiar” through Amazon’s platforms)