Critical Health Issue - The Growing Importance Of Family Medicine

Family medicine is a medical specialty concerned with providing continuing and comprehensive primary health care for parents and their child. It involves a very large field of medicine that is still relatively a new specialty under medicine in general. As enshrined in the goals of WHO making it a major field of medicine, "essential health care made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community by means acceptable to them, through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford." Physicians who intend to specialize in this field usually complete an undergraduate degree, finish a degree in Doctor of Medicine and then complete a three-year family medicine residency after which, they will be eligible for board certification that is a requirement by most hospitals and health plans.

The practice of medical for parents and children through family medicine is focused on the treatment of the individual throughout all of his life stages and physicians in this field are experts in common medical problems. They are also commonly the ones who assist in the delivery of babies, adolescent medicine, geriatric medicine, sports medicine, sleep medicine, obstetrics, and rural medicine.

One of the most important studies in family medicine is the history. With the advances in genetic medicine, it is aided with gathering a complete and accurate research history through a medical tree or sort of a pedigree. Similar to a simple family tree, the research of this history through the pedigree or tree includes not only the relationships among members of parents and children and earlier generations but also includes information for each person regarding diseases, age and the onset of the disease, cause of death and other relevant and necessary health information. This is a very important tool in the early study of the diseases and illnesses of the members since genetics tells that half of a childs genetic profile is from each of the parents. As such, genes that may cause or increase the risk of certain medical conditions are also inherited.

Aside from helping the doctor interpret the patterns and history of diseases in the family, the medical tree also is vital for the doctor to assess and recommend steps that could be relevant to a family members health and well being. These recommendations aside from assessing your risk to certain diseases are things like recommendations for your diet and lifestyle changes, treatments for diseases that are already on going, recommendation on the proper diagnostic tests for further study and treatment of the on going disease, identify possibilities of such disease occurring in some members of it, and assessing the risk of passing the disease to your children and future offspring.

On the part of the doctor practicing medical for the family, they are encouraged to undergo continuing trainings that will make them consistently competent in providing the medical needs and be able to adapt to differing patient needs and the changes in medical care technology. This will include continuous training in maternity care, care of hospitalized patients, community and population health, and proficient and effective medical care that respects the culture and traditions of a family.