Talk:Family medicine

Contested merger with General Practice
I merged General practice into this article, but you undid that. My rationale was different names for the same subject. This rationale is derived from the content of both articles. For example, the lead of this article gives the same definition to both General practice and Family medicine: Family medicine (FM), formerly family practice (FP), is a medical specialty devoted to comprehensive health care for people of all ages. The specialist is named a family physician or family doctor. In Europe, the discipline is often referred to as general practice and a practitioner as a general practice doctor or GP. So: Since this is the same subject with different names that are explicitly noted as varying according to region and for historical reasons, with this article being highly US-centric and the other being highly UK-centric, two articles should not cover it but one. I see that you noted that FM and GP are "not the same thing". It doesn't matter if they are exactly the same thing (no two different national healthcare systems' individual specialties are the same thing), what matters is if FM and GP are the same specialty of medicine, or two different specialties of medicine. They are the same specialty of medicine. For this reason, and with the same rationale as before, I intend to perform the merge again. — Alalch Emis (talk) 03:59, 27 February 2021 (UTC) The division of this clearly unified subject into two stongly regionally-colored articles, actually the separation of general practice from this article into another, which delinks "general practice" in one language from "general practice" in another, suffers from Local bias, and is untenable. — Alalch Emis (talk) 04:21, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) Family medicine is a medical specialty devoted to comprehensive health care for people of all ages.
 * 2) General practice is a medical specialty devoted to comprehensive health care for people of all ages.
 * dewiki version of this article: Allgemeinmedizin (meaning: General practice)
 * frwiki version of this article: Médecine générale (meaning: General practice)
 * itwiki version of this article: Medicina generale (meaning: General practice; lead starts with: La Medicina Generale/Medicina di Famiglia)
 * In healthcare context is important. The American system is so different that combining the two is misleading.  Rathfelder (talk) 09:21, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I find your reply too terse and abstract. You directed me to discussion when you reverted my edit, so let's discuss it. Please respond to some of my arguments. — Alalch Emis (talk) 19:31, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Both are centrally concerned with dealing with relations with secondary and community services, which are very different in different places, and in particular in the US very involved with health insurance systems. Rathfelder (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Title photo inaccurate
The main picture portray a french emergency physician, not a GP. Shouldn't a more accurate representation appear ? Thank you. Tipadou (talk) 10:48, 17 April 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree it could use a better picture, but what representation should it be? 165.214.68.119 (talk) 21:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Merge from Primary care and General practice

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a

Merge Proposal and / or Redirect. Please do not modify it. The result of the request for the Proposed Merger of {Primary care} and {General practice} into this talk page's article was: Not Done—No Consensus to Merge. —    —     —     —     — I propose merging Primary care and General practice into Family medicine. I think the contents in Primary care and General practice can easily be explained in the context of Family medicine, and a merger would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Family medicine. --Lagelander (talk) 09:32, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Support great idea. I have always found the way there are so many articles in this area confusing. Differences are better explained in a 'variation by country' or equivalent section rather than lots of separate articles - which also fragments limited editor time and results in a lot of needless duplication. Thanks for proposing it. Tom (LT) (talk) 22:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per my comments in the above section and here: diff. Pinging . — Alalch Emis (talk) 10:41, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I think these articles should be split into different countries.  Practice, and particularly funding, targets etc. is increasingly divergent.  One article for the whole lot would be impossibly long. Rathfelder (talk) 10:50, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What do you think about this article, Family medicine, acting as a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE general subject, with national articles as daughter articles. This would be very conventional. — Alalch Emis (talk) 10:55, 2 October 2021 (UTC)...basically, we do the merge, this stays as "Family medicine", the USA section becomes the "Family medicine in the United States", the UK section becomes the "General practice in the United Kingdom" (OR the current general practice article is NOT merged and is instead renamed to "General practice in the United Kingdom", with content adjusted accordingly), etc. — Alalch Emis (talk) 11:05, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

— —  —  —  —  The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a WP:PM. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. Joyous! | Talk 22:56, 14 December 2022 (UTC) A copy of this template can be found here.
 * Partial support. This area seems to be a mess at the moment. Family medicine and general practice are essentially the names of the same medical specialty in different countries, and it would be helpful to have one article to give an overview of the subject and then country-specific articles underneath (as proposed by ). I'm also not convinced that we need separate articles for general practitioner and primary care physician, these should also be merged into the articles on the medical specialty, we don't have a separate article for a cardiologist as opposed to the field of cardiology after all and I don't think that this is a helpful way of organising information. That being said, primary care should not be merged into these articles, as it is not synonymous with the medical specialty but also encompasses other healthcare professionals in the community (e.g. community nurses, dietitians, pharmacists). Despite what the article on general practice says, this is not a UK-specific definition. So the article on primary care needs to be expanded to make this distinction clear (it's already clearly articulated in the article on family medicine), and then act as a parent article for this one. --GGT (talk) 14:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: too many articles in this area that should be merged. Tow (talk) 16:44, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Commment: "Family medicine" seems to be a very system/culturally dependent specialty. I don't have hard data on me, but I don't think it's treated as a specialty in most systems, since specialty studies are supposed to be for, well, specialized care. Now, this isn't to secretly flex on how Latin American doctors are clearly superior to those from elsewhere, just that within several systems this is not a thing: if you have a medical degree, you are by default a general practitioner until you take a specialty. So the Solomonic solution here would probably be to centralize information of general practice and then leave this one as mostly discussing the academic side of things, highlighting how it came to be its own thing in systems such as those of the USA, etc. 181.115.61.24 (talk) 07:21, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Family medicine is its own specialty/residency. Not all primary care physicians are family medicine physicians; many adult general practitioners are internal medicine-trained, for example. Family medicine =/= primary care.
 * Oppose, as I think that there is sufficient scope for the current articles to remain, but sections can be moved to reduce duplication. Family medicine could stay and be repurposed as a US-only article (or for those following a US model such as Japan), while other countries (particularly those from the Commonwealth) could be covered in General practice. Hatnotes can help guide readers to the content they're interested in. Klbrain (talk) 09:23, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Contested Addition of Family Medicine Fellowships and certifications table, add it or not?
Family physicians may pursue fellowships or additional training in several fields, including: *: No longer available after October 2023

The fellowship opportunities for Family Medicine have become a more relevant topic, as it is believed that many medical school graduates chose Internal Medicine and other specialties due to the limited number of fellowships that Family Medicine offers. This has become more relevant because of the primary care physician shortage spoken about elsewhere. One of the arguments made for increasing the number of fellowships available to Family Medicine physicians is that many fellows become fellows so that they can practice outpatient, clinic-based care, that clinical setting is the primary focus of family medicine for which they receive training, as such they argue that family medicine should have access to these fellowship specialties. Another argument made for increasing fellowship opportunities for Family medicine is that the scope of practice of family medicine is broad and oftentimes ill-defined, and technically it is within their scope of practice to perform skin cancer removal and skin biopsies (a practice often done by dermatology) as well as endoscopies and colonoscopies (a practice often done by gastroenterology), and some performing appendectomies (a practice often done by general surgeons). 165.214.68.119 (talk) 21:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Add it.
 * I had no idea what fellowships were available, someone linked to this page on reddit Family Medicine for this exact table citing how useful it was. Kuzad (talk) 00:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See WP:NOTAVOTE and WP:CANVASS. This discussion has apparently now been poisoned by an attempt to drum up 'votes' on other sites. - MrOllie (talk) 01:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds like someone is getting personally involved in a topic that does not warrant personal involvement. Also, I did not post to reddit. So, there has been no poisoning. 165.214.68.117 (talk) 13:45, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify something? MrOllie said "has been poisoned", without suggesting by who. Your history shows this is your first post in over four months. How are you involved now? Did you think was implied? By saying "I did not", should we take it that you are posting here as Kuzad and under an IP number? That's not a rhetorical question. Are you?   signed, Willondon (talk)  16:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it is pretty clear who he is implicating - the original creator of the table. I am not posting as Kuzad. 165.214.68.112 (talk) 15:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK. I still question the logic of I did not post to reddit. So, there has been no poisoning.. If Kuzad-who-is-not-you isn't implicated, rather the OP is implicated, why would your posting on Reddit or not have anything to do with whether someone else did? I, too, see clear signs of attempting to game the system. signed, Willondon (talk)  15:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps there's some confusion, I am on a shared network so my IP address changes. MrOllie said that "This discussion has apparently now been poisoned by an attempt to drum up 'votes' on other sites." clearly accusing the OP (me) of poisoning the discussion by posting to reddit. To which I (the OP) replied that I did not post to reddit, and therefore did not poison anything. Again I, the OP, have not posted anything anywhere since this discussion started regarding this discussion in an attempt to "drum up" votes. 165.214.68.112 (talk) 15:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter who did it (which is why I didn't name anyone in particular), only that it apparently has happened. New editors who have been directed to this discussion simply need to be made aware of WP:CANVASS and WP:NOTAVOTE so they don't fill the discussion with 'votes' that will be irrelevant to the outcome. MrOllie (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I (the OP) didn't canvass. I have not directed anyone to this discussion. 165.214.68.112 (talk) 18:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Not. As I've been saying elsewhere, Wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection of information. This is a project for writing prose encyclopedia articles, not for building tabulated lists of data. This is outside the scope of what we do here. We're not a tool for recruiting prospective medical students. MrOllie (talk) 21:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Add it.
 * I thought this was supposed to be a discussion for people NOT involved in the primary disagreement?
 * This list is clearly not indiscriminate - (Indiscriminate: "done at random or without careful judgment" - the list is clearly NOT done at random or without careful judgment). It was clearly done with intention and careful judgment.
 * It also provides a list comparable to other medical specialty Wikipedia pages but with more information that is relevant, with links for readers to seek additional information (as in not as in-depth as it could be).
 * Providing information is exactly what Wikipedia is designed for - and I quote the Wikipedia About Us page: "Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by presenting information on all branches of knowledge." (please note they do not have any issue with lists or tables) which this information is an excellent example of information related to the practice and education of Family Medicine within the United States.
 * This table is NOT a tool to recruit anyone. Many people within medicine have no idea what fellowships and certifications are available to Family Medicine physicians. And many patients do not know either. This information is relevant to all readers. A patient may wonder whether their Family Medicine doctor can be trained in a specific field and is qualified to manage X or Y condition, they can see that from the table provided whether they are or not, and if that training was ACGME (governing body) approved or not. 165.214.68.119 (talk) 21:22, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * (Just to reiterate some discussion that already took place on your talk page:)
 * I see the list as beyond the scope of Wikipedia for an article on "Family Medicine". (1) The organizations listed are all American. (2) The list is indiscriminate in this context; for instance "Aerospace Medicine" is not part of "Family Medicine".
 * The counter argument was 1. The list is within the United States section on Family Medicine making it relevant to that specific section. To which I say: fair point.
 * 2. If it is a fellowship or certificate after attaining Family Medicine certification then it is within the scope of Family Medicine (as shown in the table) and as such would be within the scope of an article regarding Family Medicine. Therefore, it is NOT indiscriminate. I don't see a strong argument there; I compare it to an article on "High School education", and the inclusion of a list of graduate degrees one might afterwards pursue in college.  signed, Willondon (talk)  21:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * P.S. Talk page discussion is open to everybody, not just the previously uninvolved. In fact, many discussions are lucky to get participation from anyone outside the original issue. I'm aware that there are forums here for soliciting input from editors experienced in editing articles in a certain field, but I'm not aware of which ones would be helpful to medical pages.  signed, Willondon (talk)
 * I bring up indiscriminate not because of the selection criteria within the list, but because Wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection overall (WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE). The mere fact that you personally find this list useful isn't a reason to include it. For example, It takes many hours of careful work to compile the phone book, too, and phone listings are undoubtedly useful, but they are still off-mission for an encylopedia. A curated list of the phone numbers of the best plumbers is arguably useful and would be relevant to our article on plumbing, but we don't have such a list because it is outside the scope of Wikipedia. MrOllie (talk) 22:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)