Ideological Debates in Family Medicine

This book brings together opposing chapters that range in form from scientific discussions to personal narratives. The need to listen to, and respect, different perspectives is especially relevant to the content and process of family medicine – the body of knowledge on which family practice or general practice is based. As a clinical discipline, family medicine is open to different perspectives because it tolerates rather than minimises high uncertainty and low agreement in a world of ever increasing complexity. Understanding in family medicine is also messily context sensitive, holistic and relational, quintessentially co-ordinating the situated subjectivity and individualism of the art of care with the putative objectivity and collectivism of science. For family medicine, evidence has always been the changing totality of the evidence of ideas – drawn from science, theory, practical experience, expertise, the law and ethics. Ideological debates thus find a natural home in family medicine where they celebrate diverse social perspectives in which clinical issues are merely one element. No current text brings together such debates in one coherent work. Various scholars have continued to develop contested and changing concepts and models of primary care and family medicine. However, there remains an unmet need for a work dedicated specifically to grappling in a rigorous and comprehensive manner with the most important practical issues challenging the discipline today. This book aims to respond to the opportunity this lacuna presents and so offer a menu of options for a unified family medicine.