Family Health
Among the objectives of health reform that is underway, one of the pillars is to improve the care given at clinics in the country. To accomplish this, the chosen strategy is to change the approach which had been working for decades, a style characterized by healing, impersonal, and focused almost exclusively on the disease and not the person as a whole, towards a new approach known as health family. But what does this mean Family Health Family medicine is a discipline that is responsible for maintaining health in all its aspects, studying and analyzing the human body in a holistic way. This movement emerged in the U.S. and Canada in the 60s, by public discontent with the kind of attention impersonal and fragmented. Its main feature is the continuity of care. This means that there is a different team of health professionals in the field (doctor, nurse, midwife, dentist, psychologist, etc.) who will take charge of a number of families which continue throughout their lives, getting to know the main problems that afflict so we can address them in a more comprehensive or traditional biomedical approach. For this purpose, is conducting a series of changes in clinics, including sectorization, whereby families are distributed in different territories, being conducted by a team of header which will be responsible for safeguarding the health of all its members. Another important point is to provide comprehensive care, which means that he sees the person as a whole and not as a series of systems. For example, if a person has a problem in the eye and also a stomachache, you do not have to be referred to two different professionals to address each of their ailments. This is to improve the resoluteness of the health centers, avoiding long waits for hospital care. Arises is why a new medical specialty, which is the family doctor, a medical specialist, whose mission is to be the first contact of people with health, able to resolve the main and most common problems of people both in the biological and mental, as in the social area. Also must give a humanistic medicine and be skilled in the doctor-patient-family-community. On this last point, another important change in this process is to integrate the community into the daily work of health centers. Listening to their needs, serving together suggestions and prioritizing the most important problems. Finally, it is important to emphasize that not only is important to provide cure of disease, if not also educate people and provide preventive and promotional approach. That’s why today many of the old offices are being transformed into what is now known as CESFAM (Family Health Center), in which families must be segmented, providing continuity of care with a holistic and preventive approach . In summary, changes in the office at Family Health Center are: From the biomedical to the biopsychosocial (integral). It recuperative: to the preventive, curative and health promotion. From an individual work: a team work. Health sector leadership: community participation. Marcelo Larrea, Medical Family Health.
