Who Is a Family Medicine Doctor?
A family medicine doctor is a medical specialty practitioner who provides continuing, preventive, and comprehensive health care services for the individual and family across all ages, genders, diseases, and parts of the body. The family medicine doctor is usually a primary care physician and is named a family physician.
What Is the Role of the Family Medicine Doctor?
Family medicine doctors render continuing, primary, and comprehensive healthcare to neonates, infants, toddlers, children, teenagers, adolescents, pregnant women, and geriatrics. Family medicine doctors commonly see patients of all age groups throughout their life cycle.
What Are the Duties and Responsibilities of a Family Medicine Doctor?
The duties and responsibilities of a family medicine doctor include the following:
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Preventative care.
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Primary care and treatment.
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Treatment of illness and injury.
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Treatment and management of chronic diseases.
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Health education.
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Prescribing medications and treatment.
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Ordering and interpretation of diagnostic testing.
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Ordering and interpretation of laboratory testing.
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Physical examinations.
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Screening tests such as age-appropriate cancer screening, fertility screening, and STD (sexually transmitted diseases) screenings.
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Women's health, family planning, prenatal services, antenatal care, and nutrition.
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Management of growth and development.
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Healthy lifestyle counseling encompasses diet, physical fitness, weight, BMI (body mass index), nutrition and dietetics, good habits, mental health, and wellness.
What Is a Chronic Disease?
The basic and simple definition of chronic disease is a medical condition that persists for a long time or is long-lasting in duration with gradual changes over time, commonly with a long latency period and protracted clinical course, having a multifactorial etiology, with no definite cure or treatment measures that affect all age groups. It is broadly classified as a communicable chronic disease and a non-communicable chronic illness. A few examples of chronic communicable diseases like HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), tuberculosis (a bacterial lung infection), diabetes (a metabolic condition that causes increased blood sugar levels), hypertension (increased blood pressure), cardiovascular disease, asthma (inflammation and narrowing of the airways and excess mucus production that causes breathing difficulty), anxiety and depression, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (a lung disease that obstructs airflow and causes breathing difficulty), cancer, allergies, epilepsy (seizure or fits), Alzheimer's disease (a progressive neurologic condition that affects memory and other essential mental functions), osteoarthritis (a progressive joint disease that affects the ligaments), osteoporosis (a condition which causes weak and brittle bones), coronary artery disease (heart disease that affects the heart's main blood vessel), chronic kidney disease are examples of non-communicable chronic disease.
What Are Chronic Diseases Handled by a Family Medicine Doctor?
A family medicine doctor is not just limited to providing immunizations, evaluating common health conditions, and performing screening tests but plays a significant role in the management and providing treatment of chronic diseases, thus improving the quality of life of the individuals.
They help in managing medical conditions that last for a year or more and require consistent monitoring, evaluation, and medical supervision and intervention and also manages such chronic medical conditions by providing healthy lifestyle counseling. The most common chronic diseases that are managed by a family medicine doctor are as follows:
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Cardiovascular disease.
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Alzheimer's disease or other dementias.
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Cancer.
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Osteoarthritis.
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Cerebrovascular disease (stroke).
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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
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Coronary artery disease.
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Anxiety, depression, and mental illness.
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Asthma and bronchitis.
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Other pulmonary conditions.
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Hyperlipidemia (high cholesterol levels).
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Cystic fibrosis (a genetic condition that affects the lungs and the digestive tract).
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HIV or AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
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Tuberculosis.
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Thyroid diseases.
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Chronic kidney disease.
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Anemia.
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Obesity.
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Endometriosis (the uncommon outgrowth of tissues lining the uterus).
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Lyme disease (a disease caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi).
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Sleep apnea (a sleep disorder that causes breathing to stop intermittently).
How Does a Family Medicine Doctor Manage Chronic Diseases?
Chronic diseases are managed by preventive and comprehensive care, thorough evaluation, treatment management, and continuous support and monitoring by a family medicine doctor.
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Maintenance of Health Record: A health file of established care or a new patient is the most important aspect of the management of an individual. The health record consists of the individual’s medical history, previous illness, current medication regimen, medications taken previously, surgical history, family medical history, social history, personal history, and all of the individual’s most important aspects pertaining to their health. Maintaining a health record helps to identify the probability of having lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension, etc., which are among the most common chronic diseases.
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Regularly Scheduled Visits: These appointments help the patient, and the family physician establish care; build a health file, stay connected; monitor health status; monitor medication regimen, including the list of medications prescribed, dosing, and schedule; track for any early signs of emerging conditions which leads to better and more coordinated care. Regularly scheduled visits can be done in person or through virtual visits based on the patient’s and doctor’s availability and convenience.
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Screening Tests: Identifying risk factors through screening can help prevent emerging medical conditions, possibly track down life-threatening ones too, and lessen the severity of illness and suffering through early detection. The most common and routinely done test is blood pressure screening and control, which is a significant aid in preventing heart disease and stroke. The other common example is the screening of blood sugar levels in otherwise healthy individuals to evaluate glycemic control and prevent the development of diabetes through lifestyle interventions. Diabetic patients are routinely screened for kidney function tests to prevent the development of chronic kidney diseases.
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Evaluation and Treatment Planning: The family medicine doctor orders diagnostic tests to evaluate the symptoms and medical condition and interprets the results, and plans a treatment approach. The approach of medical intervention by a family physician is to provide ongoing treatment and monitoring of disease processes to absolutely stabilize the medical condition and prevent the worsening of the condition.
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Coordinating Treatment: Having a family medicine doctor who knows the medical history well enables one to manage medical emergencies or specialized care as they act as the coordinator between the specialist doctor, hospitals, and the entire health system.
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Patient Education: The family medicine doctor renders patient education through healthy lifestyle counseling. The main objective of patient education is that the primary care physician helps to achieve the optimum target numbers for health measures such as blood pressure, glucose level, cholesterol levels, and weight through their guidance, motivation, and continuous support to improve your quality of life.
Conclusion:
The long-standing medical condition with multifactorial etiology and indefinite treatment and care are called chronic diseases. The family medicine doctor handles chronic diseases by evaluating the symptoms, ordering diagnostic tests, interpreting the test results, ordering treatment and prescribing medications, and following up for further evaluation, management, and monitoring of the chronic disease.
