Boring??? I haven't had a boring day of being a family physician during my entire career since 1991 ! The problem with Family practice is exactly the opposite--too many opportunities to grow into things I never thought I'd be doing. I work and teach 50% in an inpatient medicine / ICU in a very busy hospital in California, 20% time in my own Family Pracitce Clinic (the most challenging site of my work by far), and 20-30% teaching in Family practice clinic and doing hospital administration / leadership stuff.
FP's can be useful in so many different settings. I have FP friends who work full-time in emergency rooms, on labor and delivery, in itegrative health clinics, in migrant farm clinics, in ICU's, assisting in the OR, running complex organizations....the sky is truly the limit. DON'T EVER BELIEVE A WORD YOUR MEDICAL SCHOOL SUBSPECIALTY FACULTY TRY TO BRAINWASH YOU WITH---they tried to brainwash me too "you'll only be wiping people's noses, you'll be a glorified nurse, you'll be bored and burned out in 2 years, you have too much talent to waste your time doing FP garbage, be a real doc be a surgeon, go into medicine at least they're smart, you can only work out in the boonies in family practice...and on and on). Part of me believed them for a while until I learned what so many FP's are doing--particularly those who dedicated themselves to the underserved.
The underserved are underserved throughout the healthcare system...not just in clinics...but ICU's emergency rooms, OR's, inpatient wards, etc. The underserved provide ample human experience as well as complex healthcare challenges that many of our brightest subspecialty faculty wouldn't know what to do with without 10 consultants.
Our country needs generalists in a huge way--despite what our medical school graduating classes seem to be choosing at the moment.
I can't blame students exposed to tertiary and quarternary centers as their only experience of healthcare during their education...losing faith in the capacity for any of us to provide broad, effective, evidence-based, sound and high quality care.
My decision to go into Family Practice was the best one I've made in my life.
I am proud of our specialty and greatly admire the heros who made it happen in the 1970's.
HappyFP !!