'Always Do What's Right for the Patient, and Everything Else Will Sort Itself Out'

"Listen to that still small voice inside of you that says, ‘Always do what’s right for the patient, and everything else will sort itself out,’” said incoming AAFP President Larry Fields, M.D., of Ashland, Ky., in his president’s address on Sept. 28.

“As family doctors, I promise you that you will be remembered,” Fields said, because “people remember the family doc who took care of their relatives -- for a minimum of four generations.”

“For at least a hundred years, people are going to remember you were their grandmother’s family physician. They will forget the nephrologist, but not you,” said Fields.

Family physicians embrace their profession because of the relationships they have with their patients, said Fields, “whether it’s holding a new life or the hand of a life that is ebbing away.” Sometimes it’s the FP “providing the only human touch that a patient will have the whole day,” he said.

Fields told personal stories of family physicians -- Academy members -- who fought and died for their country, fought to keep obstetrical privileges at hospitals, and fought to preserve their practices and their families in the face of hurricanes.

Each of those physicians had a rendezvous with fate, said Fields, adding, “Fate has set a rendezvous for us, the American Academy of Family Physicians.” He called the AAFP’s future course a rendezvous “with the millions of people who lack health care, with our fellow Americans suffering the injustices created by disparities in that care, with a tort system that pads pockets of plaintiff’s attorneys instead of protecting patients.”

The people of this country “desperately need the quality, affordable, accessible health care that family physicians provide better than anyone else in the world,” said Fields.

“We are masters of complexity … and we are privileged that the people of this country have allowed us to become part of their lives and their memories,” he said.

With that, Fields encouraged his colleagues to join him in making a promise, a vow he called “family medicine’s pledge to America.”

The pledge reads: “We will always care for you and keep your best interests uppermost in our minds. We will protect you and keep you safe from medical harm. We will always be by your side no matter what fate or illness befalls you. We will always do what is right for you.

“And we will deliver to you a health care system the likes of which the world has never seen.”