is relationship-based, whole-person care

In this opinion piece, Dr. Deborah Cohen shares her experience with her Dad’s health care to show the important role primary care clinicians play in taking care of the whole person. Primary care clinicians do this in the context of the relationships that they build and sustain with patients, families, and communities, as well as with specialists, as needed, to cover the entire range of an individual’s health and wellness needs.

Dr. Cohen’s Dad suffered as a result of the highly-specialized and fragmented care that he received. What he lacked was a relationship with a family doctor. “How ironic is it that we take the most complex task in medicine — integrating, personalizing and prioritizing care for whole people — trying to cram it into 10 minutes, and pay those doing this work less than those providing narrow technical care?” This is the question Dr. Stange asks in a recent commentary he wrote reflecting on the 20 years since he founded the Annals of Family Medicine. He urges the undersized and under supported primary care workforce to stop assuming responsibility for “holding together a fragmented and failing health system.”