The Family Medicine curriculum differentiates the residency from all other primary care programs. It centers around a progressive exposure of the resident to model office practices where s/he is expected to learn the skills needed to provide comprehensive primary care. This practice, supplemented by emergency room training, counseling training, didactic lectures and electives, will provide a core of knowledge and experience which will equip the resident for his/her future practice. The attitudes of involvement, ongoing commitment, and continuity are fostered in all patient interactions, and coordinating consultant care is specifically taught.

It is important that the resident utilize elective time in a way that will enable him/her to meet special educational needs as they evolve and/or apply to future practice plans.

Defining the scope of our specialty helps determine its training requirements. One definition of a Family Physician is as follows: A primary care physician with broadly based medical expertise in the common acute and chronic health problems and with additional strengths in those areas dictated by his/her professional interests and geographic practice needs. In addition to being skillful in the care of common health complaints, the physician deals with problems related to family relationships, complex social structures, active participation in health care maintenance and an understanding of health care systems and their economics.

Family Medicine includes those health areas of concern not specifically dealt with by other major curricula elements. It will be more process oriented than content related; however, this is not to say that family medicine is what is left after other disciplines have been taught. Family medicine implications apply to every health care problem, from the most tertiary, such as bone marrow transplantation, to the most commonplace, such as a bothersome UTI. It is the professional concern for those members of our community, irrespective of whether they are our patients within our practice or not, that characterizes the family physician's orientation.