In describing family medicine, it is best to start with the principles that govern the actions of family physicians. I will describe nine of them.
None is unique to family medicine.
Not all family physicians exemplify all nine. Nevertheless, when taken together, they do represent a distinctive worldview, a system of values and an approach to problems, that is identifiably different from that of other disciplines. The family physician is committed to the person rather than to a particular body of knowledge, group of diseases, or special technique. The commitment has no defined end point. The family physician seeks to understand the context of the illness.