I show them what a family physician is and does. That seems to be what they want the most. My teaching and family are only as balanced as my family and my practice are balanced. Therefore, my teaching of balance is a demonstration, not an instruction. A balance for you may not be finding those family physicians who can live with teaching but those who can t live without it and then helping them multiply their satisfaction with what they do.
Appreciation is the truest and most enjoyable dessert that most family physicians taste.
I tasted it when a first-year student called after her rotation with us. Her dad, the chair of OB-GYN at a major university, had taught her that family physicians can t deliver babies and that nobody should deliver a baby over an intact perineum. I taste appreciation every Christmas when a former student, now a chair of a department of ophthalmology at a medical university, describes in her Christmas card how much of her success as a specialist is based on what she learned from and about family physicians when with me and how much of her success as a mom and wife is based on what she learned from my family. There is so much more that I in the town and you in the gown can do together. For the sake of our students, our residents, our community family physicians, and all of our patients, let s just do it.