The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Whatever happened to family physician?

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Saturday, Mar 31, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Whatever happened to family physician?

Sahana Charan

Family doctor is becoming less visible as medicos prefer speciality courses

Bangalore: Way back in the 19th century, an American, Dr. Crawford W. Long, became the first physician to use anaesthesia in an operation he performed on March 30, 1842. To commemorate this pioneering event, March 30 was declared as National Doctors' Day in the United States. It is a very good day to contemplate on whatever happened to the family physician.

Remember the kindly touch that saw you through fever, measles, mumps, chickenpox, and yes, even teenage angst? Where is it now? In this era of super specialisations, it is not uber chic to be a family physician. While the Internet has ensured that a literate patient is decently informed about his health, the good old neighbourhood family doctor is becoming less visible as medical graduates these days prefer to take up a speciality rather than do general medicine.

But there are always the loyalists who swear by the doctor next door and will not step into the aseptic and impersonal environment of a hi-tech hospital.

"When I am down with an illness I prefer going to my family physician whom I have known since school instead of consulting a specialist. Unless I am referred to a specialist because of a recurring problem, of course," said Joe John, an IT professional working for a multinational company. Family physicians, he adds, are easily accessible and available in the case of an emergency. Getting an appointment and subsequent consultation with a specialist can be time-consuming. Moreover, when you go to a corporate hospital, you are put on to a medical professional whom you have never met and may not trust," he says.

But Surabhi Sreenivasan, a homemaker, who recently moved from Chennai to Bangalore, says, "Earlier I was consulting my family doctor because I knew I was in safe hands. But after moving here I am more confident about seeing a specialist if I have a particular problem because I feel he or she will have more knowledge about the problem."

"These days patients are well informed about their health because they can access information on the Internet. If a family physician does not constantly update himself with the latest medical information, he may not be in a position to answer his patient's queries satisfactorily and he is likely to lose the patient," Srinath Herur, former president of the Family Physicians' Association of Bangalore, told The Hindu.

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