Family practice

It is especially appropriate this year to update and review major events in the specialty of family practice, for it was almost ten years ago to the day (February 1969) that family practice, albeit only after a long and operose struggle, officially became the 20th medical specialty. Like the phoenix, which is represented on the American Board of Family Practice (ABFP) seal, the specialty rose from the ashes of what was called general practice—the residue of physicians who remained after all the others had entered a more circumscribed field of medicine. Family practice was born out of social need to fill the void created by this specialization in other more specific areas of medicine. The call was for a “broader” specialty, one that would train the “new physician” in the “old-fashioned” relationships, a physician who would not only appreciate the patient.