Without the Whitecoat
By Dr. Florentino Alerta

Family Practice… caring for the family

 
The Iloilo Medical Society (IMS) recently celebrated its 4 th annual convention focusing on problems and medical guidelines in our daily clinical practice. Attendance to the convention was in its outmost high participated in by IMS past presidents and dignitaries from PMA national. The three-day activities were full of scientific symposia, lectures and interactive sessions. It has been a reunion of some sort as some old colleagues and friends met with each other. There were also a lot of colleagues coming from district and municipal hospitals all over Iloilo province.

I smiled when I saw a flyer inserted in the program of activities which reads “ healing the family ”. Actually, such line refers to “Family Practice or Family Medicine ”. A center dedicated in the specialty of the diseases of organ systems or tissue system, but never did it mention that it cared for the whole family, but instead “heals” the family (one thing in practice that I have learned “never ever promise your patient a cure or a form of treatment, but there is one thing you can promise your patient, it is the “care” you can render him). When somebody mentioned about the specialty of “family” then it should be rightfully addressed by the “Filipino Family Physician” whose “pure” practice is the Filipino family (ever wish you can have a doctor for the whole family, then you have chosen the right specialty… “Family Medicine”, we specialize in you and the entire family).

In the past columns that I have written about “Family Medicine” it is about strengthening and giving the specialty a strong image and “uniqueness” from the rest of the other specialties. Family Practice has always stressed the point that the specialty is about the caring (not healing) for person, and the medical attention is given toward the person (we know him as the patient) as a whole individual (breathing and living human being) not just a group of tissue or organ system. Some may have looked upon it as a specialty or just as a “ second class citizen ”(general practitioner) in the field of medical practice. This day could serve as a wake-up call for those that have chosen a specialty and tried to practice outside their specialties there is always that conscience to remind them, a doctor who is trained in adult medicine and on duty in a district hospital or in a municipal health center giving care to emergency cases for adults, children and pregnant mothers, and try to make a community program for the municipality and implement it. (A valid suggestion: let's add or have community medicine or public health as part of the residency training program in the field of Internal Medicine , Pediatrics , Surgery , Anesthesia , Orthopedics and OB-GYNE .) How can we insure to deliver the correct services to our communities and clients if we don't specialize in them. (We should always remember that the training that we all have inside the hospital (institution-based) is totally different on the situations that we see in the community and remember that when we are in a district hospital we cannot make a choice on what kind of patients that walk in that door of the district hospital thus, the saying the specialty should be “YOU” (an elderly or old man, a baby, a child, an infant, a pregnant woman, someone who have a lacerated wound or a medical emergency may he be a child or an adult, this things and situation we can handle… thus the specialty of Family Practice or Family Medicine… our specialty is YOU and we are uniquely qualified.)