The family as patient: preliminary experience with a recorded assessment schema

Although family medicine has become a well-established discipline, emphasis more often than not continues to be on the individual and not the family. It is the intent of this paper to expand the focus of physician concern beyond the presenting symptom and, indeed, beyond the individual patient, to include the concept of family as patient. The family is discussed as part of a complex interactional system of stress and support factors both from within the family itself and from the wider social system of which it forms a part. A three-dimensional model for the comprehensive psychosocial evaluation of family functioning in health and illness has been presented both diagrammatically and descriptively. Most importantly, a simple set of questions is provided as an instrument to assist the physician in the assessment of family functioning in health and illness.