A message from WONCA President Elect Anna Stavdal

Many studies show that good primary health care improves health outcomes and hence increases quality of life. Underpinning such studies is traditional primary care, based on person-centred doctor-patient relationship, comprehensive care and continuity of care – the characteristics we traditionally perceive as the core values of general practice/family medicine.  Values and standards, each of which determine attitudes and behaviour, differ in that values are primarily based on beliefs and trust, as opposed to standards, where what is good or acceptable varies depending on health system and culture. 

During the last few decades general practice/family medicine has been profoundly affected by technology, commercialization, specialization and fragmentation of care around the globe. In this environment, explicit attention must be paid to these core values in professional development of family medicine.  These values are what unites us, despite differences in the physical practice conditions, remuneration schemes or living standards of the populations we serve.

Operationalizing these in local contexts, whether undergraduate and postgraduate training or family medicine research, must always be underpinned by these values we share. They should also be more visible when we brand our specialty in advocacy and liaise with other stakeholders in healthcare. Basic competencies in the toolbox, apart from state-of-the-art professional knowledge and skills, must include a thorough understanding of the prevailing context – sociocultural, geographic, demographic and epidemiologic. This is how we can provide our populations with high quality medical care.

This Global Family Medicine website can play a large role promoting such care.  It provides an overview of what family medicine looks like around the world, and can help us identify synergies, and inspire each other in our efforts in professional development in different local contexts and promote exciting new research into what is truly important in our specialty and its training.