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What does it mean to be a family physician?: Exploratory study with family medicine residents from 3 countries
Canadian Family Physician, 08/14/09

Beaulieu M–D et al. – The question of professional identity is important. Professionals need a clear sense of their profession’s identity and area of expertise to function effectively. How family physicians define their roles in our changing health care systems will have a real effect on the roles and functioning of other professionals in the system.

• Data from some countries suggest that newly trained general practitioners have conceptions of their roles that differ from what are generally considered the core features of general practice. This study aimed to explore how residents from Canada, France, and Belgium saw their new careers.
• Participants from all 3 countries expressed many similar views, but sometimes with varying emphasis. For example, although all participants believed the patient–physician relationship was important, European residents conceived of family medicine largely as a "profession of relationships," in which knowledge was not at the forefront as much as it was in other specialties, while Canadian respondents believed that the capacity to manage a broad scope of problems according to the latest practice guide–lines was paramount.
• The most troubling finding was of the extent to which academic settings contributed to the low appeal of family medicine. All participants strongly believed that their profession was undervalued by the medical profession and by patients. They received this message clearly from the very start of training and through interactions with specialists during rotations, even when exposure to general practice role models was more extensive.

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