Mike
I highly recommend you speak to your friends who are FPs.
In my mind, here are the pros and cons:
PROS
- Patient continuity
- Large choice for practice type (clinic, private, group, nursing home, school)
- Wide scope of practice
- Low malpractice rates
- No shortage of patients
CONS
- Reimbursement is among the lowest in medicine
- Hours can be long depending on type of practice
- Limited scope in some hospital settings (ICU)
- No shortage of patients usually means TOO MANY patients!
Overall its a great field and most people who go into FP are very happy with it. Spending some time in an FP office to see what the day is like might be a good idea.
I'm finishing up FP residency, and this is pretty much right on par with what I see. I would add to the pros that you can pretty much find a job anywhere, that goes with no shortage of patients.
The limited scope in the hospital setting is becoming more of a reality than I would like. It is getting harder to find a practice which still does all of its own inpatient work. The majority of employment opportunities I've looked into do not involve inpatient work. they are out there, but getting more scarce.
Also, due to the low reimbursement, the pressures to see a high volume of patients in a limited time is frustrating. Few graduates are in a position to start their own practice and practice their own style straight out of residency. Most need to hit the pavement and enter into an employment model where your schedule and marketing strategy is dictated by corporate bean counters who only see things in dollars and cents, and even then still don't quite "get it".
Speaking for myself personally, my own contract negiotation and employment process has been a long, drawn out, soul sucking, pride swallowing affair wherein more attention is given to market research and dysfunctional corporate dynamics than my own clinical skill and performance as a resident. This is probably true in every field, but in Family Medicine it seems that the intersection between money and medicine is even more pronounced given the low reimbursement and thin margin of error for reaching your financial bottom line.
So the low reimbursement is probably the biggest CON, mostly because it makes it hard to practice medicine the way you would like. When people say, so what, they can still comfortably live off of $120,000 a year, they are right from that standpoint. What makes low reimbursement a CON is not the salary, its the way it limits how you practice medicine.
In summary, I agree with JP's post. I just wanted to clarify why low reimbursement is a CON. I'm optimistic that this will change. Some manner of healthcare reform is on the horizon, anyone who follows politics will tell you that, and historically primary care has always benefitted financially from healthcare changes which broaden public access to healthcare. (I'm not gonna debate this statement in this thread).
BTW, The complexity of medical issues you deal with on a day to day basis equals or exceeds every other specialty. Any Family Doc who tells you FP is not challenging is either lazy or flat out doesn't know what they are doing, and is blissfully unaware of the complexity in keeping people healthy and treating multiple diseases and organ systems in a holistic and ongoing manner.
Sorry for the long post. this is one of my favorite topics.
, but mixing it with your residency choice kills the spirit any "Aspiring" doctor should have, SHOULDnt you be more worried about joining a leftist organization hell bent on relieving back pain across Afirca. 
