Being Young, Staying Young As A Discipline

Family medicine can be considered a new discipline amongst others. When we are talking about the new and the old, it will not be wrong to mention “cycle of life”; birth, growth, maturity and death. A discipline becomes useless once it is not able to develop new paradigms, therefore disciplines can be evaluated in terms of youth only by the dynamics of their ability to develop paradigms. How should family medicine be equipped in order to achieve constant paradigmal developments? Even further, which new fields should family medicine focus on?

Family medicine has too many common fields with other disciplines. This might have various consequences. It might even lead to an identity crisis because of the blurring of the lines when we are trying to define the perimeters of the common fields. Or it might try to go for scientific rampage if we coop it up in its’ own prison by defining strict perimeters. Or could it achieve the ultimate goal of using the integrity of science to enrich its’ being? It is not just a problem of choice, but also includes all the efforts to evolve the discipline’s principles into that direction of one of these alternative outcomes.