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L. S. K.

JAMA. 1970;214(9):1697.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

"The [hospital] emergency room has become the 'family physician' for a great percentage of the American population." (See p 1660.) This statement, becoming more and more true as medical specialization increases, emphasizes the challenge that medicine faces: how to retain the virtues of the "family doctor" in an environment that is becoming more and more impersonal, compartmentalized, mechanized, computerized, and allegedly "scientific."

The functions of the "old-fashioned" general practitioner—the complete family doctor—have become fragmented, intensely so in hospital practice and only slightly less so in group practice. Who still regards the patient as a whole? Who concerns himself with the patient's emotions and interpersonal reactions? These problems, once a major concern of the family physician, now ordinarily devolve upon the psychiatrist who studies the emotional health of the patient.

In hospital practice it is important to learn the degree to which emergency room clientele, for example, manifest psychological problems. How . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
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