The Family Medicine specialty: buyer’s remorse or reluctant seller?
Abstract
This year, we celebrate the first 10 years since the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) approved the specialty of Family Medicine in 2003. It is an opportune time to review the progress made. Elsewhere in this journal, Couper, Fehrsen and Hugo1 raise concerns about the “state” of family medicine in South Africa at the present time. They postulate that we need to change direction, as we are training the wrong kind of family physician for the needs of the South African population. They argue that we should have shorter postgraduate training that focuses more on “primary care” skills necessary for ambulatory care in clinics, and that we should conduct less training on “procedural and technical” skills required to work in a district hospital, citing the examples of Brazil and Cuba as the models we should follow.
Section
Editorials
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