What is family medicine?
Family medicine, commonly known as family medicine, is the discipline responsible for assisting and providing for the good health of individuals.
The essential role of this discipline is to ensure comprehensive and continuous care for the individuals, families and community they care for, regardless of age, gender or the diseases from which they are affected.
The physician will not only deal with the individual, but also with his or her family environment, whenever problems, such as psychological and social problems, originate in the family unit.
General practitioners not only treat pathologies, but also study and promote through awareness campaigns to prevent.
In addition to making a diagnosis and recommending treatment, they can also perform minor interventions. This means that they care for patients from three points of view: preventive, curative and palliative medicine.
What pathologies does it treat?
Family medicine covers a wide range of medical disciplines, being able to detect any disease in time.
- Seasonal viruses
- Lesions
- Cholesterol
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Anemia
- Infectious, autoimmune, systemic or metabolic diseases.
- Rheumatic, digestive, cardiovascular, respiratory, immunological, endocrine, neurological, etc. pathologies.
- Addictions
- Eating disorders
What subspecialties are there within family medicine?
Family medicine is multidisciplinary and covers all the specialties that exist in the world of medicine. Even so, it should be noted that if the pathology or disease suffered is complex, the family doctor will make a diagnosis in order to refer the patient to the specialist in question.
When do I need to see a general practitioner?
Being a generic discipline, able to diagnose any type of disease at an early stage, it is possible to contact a general practitioner as soon as you feel a symptom or mild pain.
Depending on the severity of the disease or the symptoms occurring in the patient, the doctor may recommend a specific treatment, an examination or a visit to another specialist to carry out a more exhaustive control.
Another reason to consult the general practitioner may be a simple medical examination or the injection of vaccines to prevent any type of pathology.