The other night I went to a gathering of prospective Family Medicine Residents along with current housestaff of the UCLA Family Medicine Program. These are young (25-30) and mostly female doctors who have decided to devote their professional lives to taking care of people. They are the unsung heroes of medicine who people in my generation will depend on for their medical care. During the course of their three year training program, they will deliver babies, see sick children in a medical hospital, take care of geriatric patients, and they will be in charge of their continuity care clinic in which outpatients will depend on them to diagnose and treat their medical problems.
Family Medicine is medicine's 20th primary specialty. They were granted approval to be a certifying board in 1969. The American Academy of Family Physicians has more than 94,600 members in 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico,, the Virgin Islands and Guam. Until October 3, 1971 it was known as the American Academy of General Practice. The name was changed in order to reflect more accurately the changing nature of primary health care.
As a psychiatrist, I am privileged to teach in primary care. When I was in medical school, in 1985, I had to decide on my specialty. This was torture for me. I liked psychiatry, but I was sad to think that as I learned more and more about psychopathology, I would lose my knowledge of primary care. With every developmental step there is loss, and so I had to cope with the fact that choosing psychiatry meant that I was giving up the day to day activities of primary care. I did not like that, but I accepted it. In 1992 I started my job with UCLA Family Medicine, and I felt lucky to be part of primary care.
Seventeen years later, I am still enjoying seeing people interview, some with the hope that UCLA will offer them the training which will launch them into their careers. When I started, the interviewees were close to my age. Now, they are close to the age of my children. I see them as fresh faces. These fresh faces will soon face life and death issues. They will face uncertainty in diagnosis and management and they will face the responsibility of being on the front lines of health care. These experiences will transform them from students to professionals.
On this night the discussions were focused on "call," the dreaded experience of staying in the hospital for seemingly endless hours at night and on the weekends. However, this alternated with discussions of boyfriends, girlfriends, and upcoming marriages. I was watching the beginning of a developmental phase. In just a few short years, these fresh faces were going to go through major life changes, both professionally and personally. They had a lot to look forward to. I felt the freshness.
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