Question about primary care

[harrypotter]

Hello all~

I was wondering if you guys could help me with the term primary care. I have an essay to write for a postbacc program that asks what aspect of primary care am I interested in...

I'm not sure what primary care is... please help...

and yes i know it's a stupid question..so please be nice!

thanks!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Robz]

Family Practice, Internal Medicine (general), Pediatrics, OB/GYN, and Psych.

 

[doepug]

Psych isn't primary care.

 

[matthew45]

Neither is OB/GYN really since it involves surgery. Primary care = FP, Peds, IM

 

[DrMom]

technically matthew is correct, but OB/GYN is now considered primary care as far as managed care is concerned.

 

[periodic]

It might be helpful to think about primary care (family practice, general internal medicine, peds, etc) as those areas of medicine where you are someone's doctor in the conventional sense. You aren't just the specialist called in when they get some weird skin rash, they come to you for their checkups, physicals, and invite you to their son's bar mitzvah. You are their _primary_ care-giver.

 

[PianoGirl04]

Right. Primary care docs are the generalists you see routinely and who may refer you to specialists for treatment of certain problems. Pediatrics, family practice, internal medicine, and ob/gyn are all considered primary care fields. IMO, the biggest advantage of going into primary care is that you get more patient contact and can actually develop a relationship with your patients, as opposed to seeing a patient once or twice as a specialist and never really getting to know him/her. But of course the pay tends to be lower than for specialists because primary care docs usually don't do as many procedures.

 

[Jeffy]

So is EM primary care then? Cause I've heard some people tell me that it is and others tell me that it isn't. It's driving me nuts especially since I can't even find the answer online.

 

[DrMom]

The scope of EM does significantly overlap primary care, but I've never seen anything "official" counting it in with primary care because EM physicians should not be anyone's regular physician.

 

[harrypotter]

Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts!

I'm a lot more clear about what primary care is. whew.. now I can write an essay that makes sense!

another quick question, is primary care still a popular choice? is there a movement towards primary care at all?

just some thoughts off the top of my head..

tootles

 

[doc05]

at most places, primary care is not popular. the reason is that the pay sucks and lifestyle is not good. not to mention the fact that NPs and PAs are doing a lot of primary care right now.

and no, EM is not primary care.

don't forget that geriatrics IS primary care.

 

[periodic]

It depends on where you're looking.

Some schools focus heavily on primary care, and good chunk of their grads go into it (residencies and practices in the previously-mentioned areas). A number of people still want to be someone's doctor and develop a continuing relationship with them, but I think primary care was falling off for a while. Not sure where it stands now - although, the policy makers definitely recognizes the chance for oversupply of specialists and undersupply of primary care docs.

Other places tend to produce specialists, and in at least my naive observance, these are the big, "top-XX", research-heavy schools.

Once you know to look for it, you can usually get a sense from a school's admissions propaganda about whether they're more focused on producing primary care docs or specialists / academics / scientists. Also, (correct me on this if I'm wrong), but an internal medicine residency can be a lead-in to many specialist fellowships, so looking at match lists might be slightly misleading about the primary vs. specialty focus.