Dare to be different! Keynote at the Wonca world conference in Prague, June 2013

After decades of developing family medicine, one can see that it has been successful in defining its principles and in proving the importance of its contribution using quantitative measures of quality that are prevailing today. But if family medicine needs to make a real contribution to society, it needs not to forget that using only rationalistic approach is not enough to define its quality and that caring for a fellow being is as important as science. Our contribution to changing the world for the better should be in constantly reminding that personal care is essential for every doctor regardless the speciality. This largely neglected feature of medicine can be best taught and researched in the context of family medicine, because it represents the very essence of the discipline. This implies that we must often take a different path from other disciplines when we address the issues of policy, research and education and use every opportunity to stress the importance of personal care.