General medicine
General medicine is often underestimated: Many people think that a general practitioner is only responsible for colds, hoarseness and trifles.
The opposite is the case: the general practitioner is ideally the primary contact point for any kind of illness, be it physical or mental. This requires a broad range of knowledge as well as empathy and social competence, because general medicine focuses on the whole person.
You can compare it to football:
There is the goalkeeper, the defenders, strikers, etc.(equivalent to “specialists”) and everyone knows his field extremely well. The general practitioner corresponds most closely to the midfielder and sees the whole playing field globally.
If more specific individual examinations are needed, they can or must be referred to a specialist. The general practitioner then puts all the different examination results into context.
He treats acute illnesses as well as chronic illnesses, is trained in the prevention of illnesses as well as in the support of long-term patients as well as in rehabilitation.
It is not uncommon for whole families to be patients of a general practitioner over their lifetime, to whom they then naturally build up a special trust. Knowing the family structures, knowing the occupations of the patients, knowing their hobbies and preferences as well as their weaknesses, paints a complete picture of the person concerned.
This requires empathy as well as the ability to guide a patient and explain sufficiently why he should follow which measures. In other words, the focus here is on close communication with the patient. In this respect, general medicine is perhaps the most human.
A general practitioner learns something new every day, also about his patients, and is closest to the pulse of the times.
Even if a patient has consulted various specialists, it is often an advantage if the general practitioner puts the corresponding diagnoses into the right context. A person does not only consist of his organs.
The mental components of the patient must be taken into account, and it is of no use to anyone if technical examinations do not produce any results but the patient continues to feel bad.
Health is defined not only by the absence of disease but by well-being. Here, too, general practitioners are often the first to suspect psychosomatic causes or to improve the patient’s general condition with vitamin infusions.
As a general practitioner, one has to be able to deal with acute situations as well as chronic diseases, to accompany patients on the possibly long road to recovery, and to involve the relatives when the life of a loved one is coming to an end. These are difficult interpersonal situations that require special empathy on the part of the general practitioner.
Standing by the patients and, if necessary, being their advocate is another challenge. God has put the right diagnosis before the right therapy, and sometimes it takes some time to find it. One of the great challenges of general medicine is not to give up but to keep on researching until one has really found the cause of the patient’s discomfort. Here it is important to question oneself as a doctor, to keep on educating oneself, also interdisciplinarily, and to seek advice if necessary.
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