The Family Medicine It is the specialty that focuses on the attention and care of all members of the family. It is a discipline that not only focuses on individual diagnoses, but also studies the environment and customs of people in order to identify the origin of discomfort or disease.
This specialty is characterized by examining the body as a whole, where doctors evaluate the symptoms presented by both children and adults and consider that the conditions, whether physical or internal, affect each member of the household. The objective of this field of analysis is to understand the conditions within the biopsychosocial context.
Consequently, it can be stated that family medicine derives from several scientific areas, such as traumatology, radiography and neurology; However, it is also influenced by shamanism and Socratism.
Due to this, the discipline has a particular identity, since its method of analysis is sympathetic with the empirical and spiritual, whose purpose is to incorporate the different cults and impartial hypotheses to offer greater security to the patient and their families.
In this sense, the function of family medicine is to create preventive therapies and theories that promote the development and well-being of the patient. In addition, it forges a life cycle so that the people around the affected individual contribute to their recovery or assimilate their death..
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During the first decades of the 20th century, clinical care was difficult for men to access for two reasons; the first was because of how expensive consultations and treatments could be, while the second consisted of the lack of resources in towns and popular areas.
For this reason, a group of scientists, among whom were Salvador Minuchin (1921-2017) and Ian McWhinney (1926-2012), decided to reinterpret the meaning of medicine and expressed that health should not be limited or specialized in a single field.
In this way a new project arose, which they called family medicine. From the beginning, this specialty had as its practical and study objective the care of people. The doctors did not emphasize the disease, but the birth of it.
That is, the specialists visited the homes of their patients in order to know how they lived, they also studied how habits could contribute to the formation and progress of the discomfort.
From this perspective derived the principle of the discipline that is still in force today. Likewise, the ideal that family medicine exposes ensures that it is not convenient to prescribe medications or qualify the condition without having known the traditions and relatives of the affected people. Thanks to this manifestation, the specialty was appreciated as a scientific subject.
In 1978, after the discourse of the Alma Alta doctors, family medicine was identified as a modern specialization or scientific and international subject that promoted primary health care and professed equality for all inhabitants.
Since its incorporation into the area of general medicine, this academic branch has favored research on slight deviations; also found a way to stop the progression of congenital conditions.
The role of family medicine is to examine the inconveniences or discomforts that threaten the human being. It not only studies hereditary diseases or in their final phases, but the way in which they cause suffering.
In addition, this discipline specializes in psychological discomfort or those ailments produced by social stress, such as headaches. Other aspects in which this discipline is interested are:
- The growth of diseases that destroy human organisms. Therefore, it seeks to know why it only affects one member of the household.
- Investigates the problems of the community where the patient lives and tries to understand the development of the individual in their environment.
- Works with the needs of family circles and the expectations they have about care and health.
Family medicine is a comprehensive discipline because it includes approaches to nosology, sociology, and other cultural aspects. It is a specialty that seeks the link between doctor, patient and family. Therefore, as a scientific subject it requires a methodology.
Its study method is constituted by qualitative and quantitative analysis and field work, however, family medicine does not study reality in a fragmented way, but as a unit. When developing the methodological framework, physicians rely on the following elements:
Unlike the other branches of medicine, the family values and examines emotions as biological processes that cannot be separated from the pain caused by discomfort or illness.
This aspect states that patients and family members must actively participate in recovery or treatment. Likewise, living conditions are essential because they can generate solutions or inconveniences..
Family medicine is the specialty that integrates the clinical, biological and behavioral sciences. Doctors who practice this discipline have the ability to work with each organ and with the immune system.
Over the years, this scientific and academic branch has been relating its biomedical paradigm with humanistic pillars, such as psychology. The purpose is to guide the family circle and guide the individual to learn to connect their mind with their body and environment..
Currently, this specialization is highly relevant in developed countries, but not in underdeveloped countries due to a lack of political and economic organization. The two fundamental concepts of family medicine will be exhibited below:
It is the basis of discipline. It represents the first contact with the patient, who, without even knowing what he is suffering from, places his trust in the doctor in order to coordinate his well-being.
It is the ability of patients to wait for a specific report on their health. Before making a diagnosis, family specialists observe the evolution of the discomfort and how the person links his illness with the daily environment.
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