Find a Business
Featured >
Family Medical, Gainesville, FL Family MedicalTaking Care of You
The Big Picture in Health Care.
MEDICAL DECISIONS can be complicated. Gone are the days of house visits from the neighborhood doctor. Not to mention that we are routinely bombarded with television commercials recommending this medicine or that treatment with a litany of provisions and potential side effects. These days you need someone on your side helping decipher all the information and looking out for your best medical interest.
Family practitioners do just that. They are doctors who specialize in family medicine including general medical care, pediatrics and management of acute and chronic illnesses. Family medicine is a relatively new field, which got its start as a new specialty created in 1969. A family physician’s education includes medical school, after which they complete a residency in family practice and become board certified. They treat young and old, men and women, individuals or entire families.
University of Florida family medicine doctors provide care at five locations in Gainesville and the surrounding communities. Services range from pediatric, family planning, women’s healthcare, general medicine, and general dermatology. However, they want you to know that there’s so much more to family healthcare. The two most important advantages in seeing a family practitioner are health maintenance and early detection. Health maintenance includes anything from encouraging healthy lifestyle choices and cancer screening to disease prevention through immunizations. At times, encouraging patients to change their lifestyles and make healthy choices can be a challenge. Family practitioners emphasize getting to know their patients and learning how best to communicate with them. Some patients need hard facts, no matter how dire they might sound. Others need information softened a bit so as to not scare them away.
“We deal with a wide range of people,” explains Dr. Daniel Rubin. “We have to have a relationship with each one of our patients to know the best way to guide and treat them.”
Early detection can mean the difference between life or death. The early diagnosis of heart disease can provide the necessary treatment to avoid a fatal heart attack. But diagnosing such conditions is not always straightforward. It can require not just a physical exam, but also in-depth discussions between the patient and doctor, not just of the symptoms, but environmental issues too. This discussion is a vital part of any exam because patients don’t always know what symptoms are most important.
Dr. Sharon Gavin explains, “If a patient comes into our office concerned because she’s had a history of heart burn we will interview her and ask very specific questions about other symptoms she might be experiencing. That might be when we realize that she’s also experienced episodes of shortness of breath but hadn’t thought to mention it because they seemed unrelated. In a case like this, cardiovascular disease might be diagnosed and treatment started because we took the time to ask her the right questions. We have to see not just the trees but the forest too.”
From their knowledge of area experts, your family practitioner can help select the most appropriate specialist for your condition if one is needed. They will also help you formulate questions to ask the specialist and let you know what to expect during your visit. Your family practitioner and the specialist will work together as a team and your family practitioner will still serve as your medical “clearinghouse,” keeping track of all the medications, possible drug interactions and the progress of your treatment.
Working in family medicine can be both challenging and rewarding. Physicians have to be prepared for any medical situation that presents itself, from a routine rash on a child, to complications from a drug interaction in a senior citizen. But for the same reasons it’s also rewarding.
By working with patients over a long time, the physicians get to know them as well as their families. “We see different generations of patients within one family,” explains Dr. Gavin. “It gives us a good perspective when we’re able to treat the entire family beyond just medical issues. For example, if a patient comes in with back pain and we know she cares for her children and her aging mother we can suggest home health care to assist in the care of her mother as well as treatment for her back pain. We don’t just look at one medical issue, but the person and family as a whole.”
Family practitioners are trained to use the bio-psycho-social approach to healthcare. This means that biological, social and personal factors are all incorporated into the diagnosis and treatment plan for the patient. In short, they look at the big picture from the inside out.
“A lot of what we see are psychological issues that manifest themselves physically. Patients come in because they’re in pain, but the pain is often caused by stress, anxiety or depression. We have to work through that with the patients and try to figure out what could be causing the pain,” says Dr. Gavin.
If it’s time to select a physician for you or the entire family, call one of the UF family practice offices. Their physicians will help guide you through the maze of modern medicine. G
Visit their website at www.shands.org/offices/ then choose Family Practice from the drop-down menu. You can also visit Community Health and Family Medicine site at www.chfm.ufl.edu.
-advertisement-
