[The general physician, essential actor in the medicine of the future]

In most countries, the number of general practitioners is double that of specialists: This single feature makes evident the fact that the medical profession depends, to a great extent, on the effects that the entire spectrum of professionals devoted to health produces on the society, not only those who, for obvious reasons, have been trained as specialists to acquire knowledge in depth in a specific field of human pathology. In a considerable proportion of cases, the general physician represents the first contact of the patient with the medical profession and in many cases this is the only relationship that the patient requires. The general physician should be the doctor to decide whether the ailment would be better studied by a specialist. During the second part of the 20th Century, great importance was given to the consolidation and expansion of medical specialties; however, in many instances an inadequate image of medicine was produced. The performance of specialists in some cases was seen as excessively reductionistic, complex, detached, and unnecessarily expensive. This vision was frustrating to a large number of patients. The general practice of medicine has a primordial place in medicine, and we all must contribute to its academic progress as well as to the precise delineation of its areas of efficiency, to reintegrate the classical image of kindness, solidarity, and humanism into novel concepts of scientific and technological capabilities from which we all will benefit.