Family practitioners treat people of all ages, not necessarily families as such. Both internists and family practitioners, as well as osteopaths, are qualified to provide comprehensive health care and to diagnose physical and mental disease, but their training differs to some degree. Family practitioners and osteopaths have postgraduate training in such fields as internal medicine, minor surgery, orthopedics, and preventive medicine. The postgraduate training of internists places more emphasis on more serious disorders of the heart and lungs, the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tracts, and the endocrine glands, and on chronic diseases such as arthritis and diabetes. While it is useful for a doctor to have some knowledge of the entire family, a given family may well require more than one primary-care physician.
Different members have different needs.
A reliable source of doctors' names is a good hospital, which can provide the names of internists and family practitioners on their staff who practice in the community. In some communities, public interest groups provide lists of doctors' names and addresses together with information on office hours and other practical considerations. Some have begun to supply comparative data on doctors' prices for common procedures. Friends and relatives, usually consulted first about a new doctor, are in fact the least reliable of the possible sources of names. They may, however, be able to give useful information about doctors' personalities.