Family Medicine history

Fleming’s laboratory discovery led to the widespread availability of penicillin, which might have saved my grandfather’s life, if it had been available when he developed an infected foot with subsequent lymphangiitis that eventually caused his death in 1930.

The organisation of general practitioners in Great Britain in 1948 was closely linked to the National Health Service, but the healthcare burden seriously threatened consultation times and care quality.

To meet the demands of general practitioners, their practice deteriorated.16 J. S. Collings17 published a devastating description of British general medicine in The Lancet in 1950.

The Charter allowed for the ideological independence of a new college, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), which was founded in late 1952.

In 1953, the RCGP found that general medicine teaching was present in only three British faculties.

In Canada, as in Great Britain, a belligerent minority of general practitioners took the initiative of founding the College of General Practice (later, Family Physicians) in 1954.

The first chair of general medicine was set up in Edinburgh in 1963.

The milestone in the history of British general medicine was the Family Doctor Charter19 of 1966, around which revolved the desires of most general practitioners.

He was appointed the first Professor of Family Medicine in Canada at the University of Western Ontario in 1967 and is thought to be the leading theorist in general practice.

The first certification exam by the College of Family Physicians was held in 1969.

Until October 3, 1971, it was known as the American Academy of General Practice.

The Centro Internacional para la Medicina Familiar (International Centre for Family Medicine, CIMF) was established in Caracas in 1981.

Farmer and his collaborators were the first to show in 1991 that those with the lowest age-adjusted mortality rates had the highest density of family doctors based on data from all US counties.

She has been a true revolutionary and her work entitled “Is Primary Care Essential?”,33 published in The Lancet in 1994, began to demonstrate with data the power of Primary Care and converted it into something evident rather than a philosophy and utopia.

In 1998, the number of family practice residency positions filled by US medical graduates first began to fall.5 The pendulum was shifting back to sub-specialized care.

Owing to the movements of the Earth’s pole vis-à-vis the planets, a new “age” begins approximately every 2000 years.

In 2002, the Future of Family Medicine project developed a strategy to transform the identity of the family medicine specialty as well as meet the needs of both patients and physicians in the ever-changing health-care environment.

Residencies are currently having difficulty filling positions with US medical school graduates, and in July 2005, 39.6% of our first year residents were international medical graduates.6

In 2016, active AAFP members averaged 32 hours a week in direct patient contact while averaging 46 work hours per workweek.