Seeing your family doctor

[Redbird537]

There are many people who have a serious medical condition and never visit a family doctor. They end up with life threatening symptoms and instead of visiting a clinic, they stay at home hoping for the symptoms to improve on their own. Many times these symptoms don't go away on their own, and require a prescription from the family doctor to treat or cure. At times, these people may also look to their peers, who are not medical professionals, for answers which were plucked from a handful of non-reliable sources. Any symptoms (such as high fever, lethargy, blood in the urine, etc.) could be dangerous and immediate medical care should be administered.

The opinion of your family doctor is beneficial and especially helpful when they know your family history - establishing a long term relationship with a good family doctor is very important. If you're unsure of where to find a family doctor, you can look online at your local health center's physician directory. My local health center is Lone Star Family Health Center in Conroe, Texas, and they have a directory of local family doctors serving Montgomery County, Texas. The directory includes photos, medical field, and a biography for each of the physicians. I find this information very helpful when I need to find a new family doctor, or a specialized physician. If your local health center doesn't publish this information online, you can call the clinic and they should be able to send you a list of their available family doctors.

[SassyLassie]

Good post, Caregiver.

Medical care is different here in New Zealand than America, it is harder to get specialist, but, it is getting that way in the states (my home) as well.

[caregiver222]

The most important factor in selecting a primary care physician is the hospital affiliation. Ideally, the physician should have priviliges at a teaching hospital. None of this will matter until suddenly you have a problem requiring surgery or hospitalization.

Medical care involves (1) diagnosis and (2) treatment.

In most cases it doesn't matter much who the doctor is because the diagnosis and treatments these days are relatively standardized. A differential diagnosis in a complex case is best made at a teaching hospital, because "two heads are better than one", and at such hospitals you generally get a "round robbin" evaluation.

It is helpful to have a primary care physician selected before something serious happens so there will be one doctor "steering the ship".

In addition, many insurance plans will not permit a specialist consult without a referral from a primary care physician.