Some people make the mistake of assuming that family doctors can only handle simple medical concerns, like vaccinations, ear, nose and throat infections, school annual physicals, and the likes. Fortunately, these are just some of the common benefits of having a family doctor who knows your entire family’s health needs. More importantly, you can leverage your long-standing relationship to consult on 80-90% of all your health concerns.

Family doctors work with patients throughout their lifetime, which allows them to build relationships with families. General practitioners, on the other hand, build relationships with specialists so they can refer patients for additional treatment when necessary. For your family’s continued good health, you should consider working with a family doctor who emphasizes the use of preventive medicine by you and your loved ones to improve your overall health and wellbeing.

Family doctors do not specialize in any particular medical field. Instead, they have a vast amount of medical knowledge that allows them to care for patients with hundreds of different problems. This makes them a great resource to also educate their patients on disease prevention and treatment of illnesses, and create treatment plans to help manage chronic medical conditions.

Family physicians can intervene in all major medical areas, including:

• Child care
• Preventive medicine
• Internal medicine
• Surgery
• Psychiatry
• Dermatology
• Pediatrics
• Gynecology
• Orthopedics
• Sports medicine

This means that your family doctor can address most, if not all, of the common medical/health concerns that can affect your loved ones. In the 10 to 20% of cases that require specialized attention, your family doctor will guide you to the proper sub-specialist and help coordinate the process.

Final Note

With the personal relationships that family doctors develop with families, they are able to focus on treating and improving the general health and wellbeing of your entire family, as opposed to just fighting the diseases and other problems as they arise. By providing compassionate and personalized care and leveraging the latest technological advances and new treatment approaches, family doctors can consistently provide all people, from expectant mothers and infants to kids and teens to adults and seniors, with the highest quality of care.