To answer Dr Ladouceur,1 no, this is not the end of family medicine. Millions of Canadians do not have family doctors. If a person gets credible and valid information from a website linked to a responsible organization, and that person invites the doctor to participate in his or her (henceforth abbreviated his) health care, more power to him—it won’t take much effort for us to help that person.
Dr Ladouceur talked about advanced cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson disease, multiple sclerosis, myocardial infarction, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer disease, leukemia, and cystic fibrosis, and asked, “How can a physician who is not an expert in any of these diseases ... continue to be relevant?”1 What I do is ask my friendly librarian to find articles about the topic (big randomized controlled trials are great, but I often just read a recent review article). I study the articles, then ask the patient to return to review my assessment of the issue.
Some people don’t seek information online. Some people get online information that is misleading. The doctor can help educate uninformed or misinformed patients. The patients who come back to review my assessment of a question they brought up after an online search thank me for my effort and opinion.
The University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine sends medical students to work with me and my patients. Most of the students have a degree in science, and they have access to all the information available about any disease. The students report that they appreciate the guidance I give them. It takes most people about 10 000 hours of work to get good at something, including family medicine. If medical students appreciate the Gestalt of a family practitioner, so do patients.
Do not despair.
Footnotes
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Competing interests
None declared
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Reference
- 1.↵