Comprehensive care also implies that the patient is viewed not only from a biological perspective but also from a social and psychological one. The family physician view the individuals in the context of their total needs. The family physician co-ordinates the care of the individual patient. The family physician identifies other health care providers and health care resources that are needed to assist in the patient's overall care. It is the family physician's responsibility to guide the patient throught the health care system.
Family physicians act as patient advocates.
It is better for the patient to go through the family physician to the consultant. Then the consultant mus not only satisfy the patient but also satisfy the family physician. The family doctor should have a deep commitment to people and obtain his greatest professional fulfilment from his relations with people, to believe in the primacy of the person, to use technology with skill but to make it always subservient to the interest of the person. Attempts to produce a family doctor by putting together conventional training in paediatrics and internal medicine and adding some psychiatry are doomed to failure. The whole is different from the sum of its parts.