After 6 weeks on this rotation, I have become somewhat familiar with the practice of family medicine. Ultimately, I've realized you need to be a REALLY good doctor if you want to go into family medicine because you essentially need to have a mastery of three subjects: internal medicine, pediatrics, and ob/gyn. However, due to the reimbursement rates and restrictions on patient care, family medicine doesn't generally attract the top students. Even if you're a pretty good student, it is really difficult to know three broad fields very well. It seems that end result is a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation.
Coming off of the ob/gyn rotation, I think that there is a reason a "speciality" exists for this field. Those doctors are putting in IUDs everyday, talking about birth control options every day, looking at cervices everyday. Therefore, they have a better grasp on diseases affecting those patients. Yes, doing a pap smear isn't very difficult but fully managing a women's ob/gyn needs can be, and I think it should be left to the ob/gyns to do that.
However, I also realized the utility of the "family doc" in rural areas. If you have a good base of knowledge in internal medicine, pediatrics, and ob/gyn, and you're the only doctor for a few hundred miles, it makes sense. However, in the urban setting, I feel that patient receive better care going to the specific subspecialty of pediatrics or ob/gyn.
Overall, I have enjoyed this rotation. It's patient-care focused. There is a lot of preventative medicine. The hours are pretty nice (but you hours outside of clinic are generally filled with paperwork). You see a wide variety of patients. Other times it can get pretty monotonous (for example, having 5 physicals back to back). Ultimately, I don't think it's my passion. I don't feel as excited coming to clinic every day as I do going into the OR.
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