Pauline W. Chen, M.D. recently wrote about primary care in the New York Times (12/11). She says that even though primary care is provided in a multitude of locations by a diverse array of professionals, including nurses and physicians’ assistants, family-practice doctors, general internists, gynecologists and pediatricians, primary care physicians are the cornerstone of the medical field.
As the nations foremost doctors, primary care physicians confront everything from chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. They even address even more critical conditions such as pneumonia, intractable flu and prospective cancerous masses, tumors and lumps.
Unfortunately, for several months now, medical journals have been reporting on the approaching scarcity of primary care physicians. If present conditions continue to be unaddressed, more primary care physicians may diminish the amount of patients they keep or even have to stop working period.