A family orientation in health care can provide a wider understanding of illness and a broader range of solutions than the classic biomedical model. This volume thus offers practical guidance for the physician who would like to take greater advantage of this resource. The result is a readable guide, structured around step-by-step protocols that are vividly illustrated with case studies drawn from the authors extensive experience at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

The provision of suitable mental health care is one of the major tasks facing general practitioners and their teams. Family-oriented primary care has moved from doctor-controlled to patient-centred consultations, with a greater emphasis on collaboration. The systemic framework uniquely lends itself to this shift in emphasis, as it views the delivery of care in social rather than merely medical terms. There is now a strong evidence base for the efficacy of systemic approaches in managing many different types of mental health and relationship issues. This text is a practical guide for health professionals working in primary care who wish to improve their management of problem patients, problem families and problem situations. Step-by-step, it introduces both the theory and the practice of the family approach - from interviewing individual patients in routine consultations to conducting specific family crisis meetings. It includes many concrete suggestions for using simple family therapy techniques and encourages the clinician to think about cases constructively. Case histories and patient stories are used extensively to illustrate the techniques as well as boxed information to highlight key points.

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.

High-quality primary care is the foundation of the health care system. It provides continuous, person-centered, relationship-based care that considers the needs and preferences of individuals, families, and communities. Without access to high-quality primary care, minor health problems can spiral into chronic disease, chronic disease management becomes difficult and uncoordinated, visits to emergency departments increase, preventive care lags, and health care spending soars to unsustainable levels. Unequal access to primary care remains a concern, and the COVID-19 pandemic amplified pervasive economic, mental health, and social health disparities that ubiquitous, high-quality primary care might have reduced. Primary care is the only health care component where an increased supply is associated with better population health and more equitable outcomes. For this reason, primary care is a common good, which makes the strength and quality of the country's primary care services a public concern. Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care puts forth an evidence-based plan with actionable objectives and recommendations for implementing high-quality primary care in the United States. The implementation plan of this report balances national needs for scalable solutions while allowing for adaptations to meet local needs.

This thorough update of a classic text describes the impact of recent economic and structural changes in health care on the role of the medical family therapist, and how medical and mental health providers can learn to collaborate in various settings.

Within the medical professions, the notion of the family as the basic unit of medical care has attracted a wide following, especially from physicians committed to a psychosocial orientation. Collaborative family-oriented primary care rests on interaction between family physicians and family therapists or counselors. Fundamental to this view is the conviction that one cannot understand a patient's illness without knowing the social, emotional, and biological context in which he or she lives. In addition, the author provides a much-needed examination of the rationale for instituting this type of medical care organization, and how such care can be cost effective, satisfying to patients, and a means to further understanding and research into health and illness.