Defining The Other Solitude: Urban family practice training

The changing content of urban-based family practice needs to be redefined so that appropriate family medicine training programs can be planned to meet the primary care health needs of Canada's urban-based population. Although the core content of family practice is common to both rural and urban areas, each requires specific skills and attitudes dictated by differences in patient characteristics, disease incidence, physician expectations, and professional contexts. A challenge for the future is the development of both rural-based and urban-based streams of family medicine training that will unite rather than divide the profesiion.