Offers guidance on the principles of family medicine, primary care in the community, and various aspects of clinical practice. Suitable for both residents and practicing physicians, this title includes evidence-based, practical information to optimize your patient care and prepare you for the ABFM exam.

Much is new in Family Medicine since the last edition of our textbook. For example, not only is the therapy of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) much different than a few years ago; the epidemiol ogy of the disease has also changed and more than half of the family physicians in a rural state such as Oregon have already managed patients with HIV disease or AIDS. 1 There are new immunization recommendations for children and new antibiotics for the treatment of bacterial infections. Computers are bringing medical informatics and on-line consultation into office practice. Medicare physician payment reform is underway and the reality of rationing medical care has been recognized. There has been a recent increase in student interest in a family practice career,2 coincidental with a Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) recommendation that at least 50 percent of all residency graduates 3 should enter practice as generalists. Also there is increasing awareness of the need for a 4 Center for Family Practice and Primary Care at the National Institutes of Health. This all-new fourth edition is intended to present the scientific and practical basis of family medicine with special attention to what's new in family medicine. The emphasis is on how the physician provides continuing and comprehensive care for persons of all ages, with clinical content selected from the perspective offamily physicians. The format ofthe book, like the practice of family medicine, continues to change.

Thoroughly revised and updated, the most complete family medicine board review guide continues to be the resource of choice for anyone preparing to take the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) examination. This edition includes dozens of new cases.

Whether you offer comprehensive pregnancy care in your primary care facility, or provide prenatal and postpartum care, this book delivers the guidance you need to optimize health for both mothers and their babies. It covers all aspects of birth care, from preconception counseling and prenatal care, through labor and delivery (both low-risk and complicated), to postpartum care and the first month of life. The completely revised third edition includes the most up-to- date, evidence-based standards of care. It offers information that is patient centered, prevention oriented, educational, and sensitive to the care of the whole woman and her family. Features a reader-friendly outline/narrative format for ease of use in daily clinical practice. Describes how to care for patients with a wide range of medical conditions during pregnancy as well as pregnancy-related conditions. Takes a whole-family approach to maternity care, with discussions of maternal and paternal adjustment, marital adjustment, sibling adjustment, single-parent families, and return-to-work issues. Provides patient and family education materials on a full range of topics, from nutrition in pregnancy to breastfeeding. Features a section on alternative medicine in maternity care. Provides detailed instruction for a wide array of procedures, including cesarean delivery, perineal repair of simple and complex lacerations, circumcision, assisted deliveries, and amnioinfusion. A continued strong emphasis on evidence-based medicine includes an ongoing summary of Level A recommendations throughout the text. A new chapter summarizes practical applications of how to incorporate continuous quality improvement and enhanced medical safety into the maternity care setting. A new section details which immunizations can be used safely during pregnancy. A section on "Centering Pregnancy" discusses this new model of care and how it incorporates longitudinal group.

An accessible guide to family health care discusses drug interactions, symptoms, first aid, and how to choose a family doctor, including a new research about hormone therapy and heart surgery.

Preceded by Textbook of family medicine / Ian R. McWhinney, Thomas Freeman. 3rd edition. 2009.

With family doctors increasingly overburdened, bureaucratized, and burned out, how can the field change before it's too late? Over the past few decades, as American medical practice has become increasingly specialized, the number of generalists—doctors who care for the whole person—has plummeted. On paper, family medicine sounds noble; in practice, though, the field is so demanding in scope and substance, and the health system so favorable to specialists, that it cannot be fulfilled by most doctors. In Searching for the Family Doctor, Timothy J. Hoff weaves together the early history of the family practice specialty in the United States with the personal narratives of modern-day family doctors. By formalizing this area of practice and instituting specialist-level training requirements, the originators of family practice hoped to increase respect for generalists, improve the pipeline of young medical graduates choosing primary care, and, in so doing, have a major positive impact on the way patients receive care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fifty-five family doctors, Hoff shows us how these medical professionals have had their calling transformed not only by the indifferent acts of an unsupportive health care system but by the hand of their own medical specialty—a specialty that has chosen to pursue short- over long-term viability, conformity over uniqueness, and protectionism over collaboration. A specialty unable to innovate to keep its membership cohesive and focused on fulfilling the generalist ideal. The family doctor, Hoff explains, was conceived of as a powered-up version of the "country doctor" idea. At a time when doctor-patient relationships are evaporating in the face of highly transactional, fast-food-style medical practice, this ideal seems both nostalgic and revolutionary. However, the realities of highly bureaucratic reimbursement and quality-of-care requirements, educational debt, and ongoing consolidation of the old-fashioned independent doctor's office into corporate health systems have stacked the deck against the altruists and true believers who are drawn to the profession of family practice. As more family doctors wind up working for big health care corporations, their career paths grow more parochial, balkanizing the specialty. Their work roles and professional identities are increasingly niche-oriented. Exploring how to save primary care by giving family doctors a fighting chance to become the generalists we need in our lives, Searching for the Family Doctor is required reading for anyone interested in the troubled state of modern medicine.