How Family Health Care Can Help the Whole Family Stay Healthier
Posted on: 12 October 2016
Share
In an age where many doctors are specialising there are some advantages in finding a health centre that emphasises family health care for all members of the family in the same centre. Here are some of the ways that family health care can help your family.
A one-stop shop
In the early years of having a young family, you can often find yourself at the doctor very often between pregnancy checks, vaccinations and health baby checks for your bubs and early childhood illnesses. At times it can feel like you visit the doctor every week! Having a family doctor allows you to combine some of the these appointments into a single check so that you can get the baby vaccinated as well as getting your toddler's asthma checks and a refill on your own prescriptions.
Having a family health care centre can make it easier for busy parents to get all of the families health needs addressed as efficiently as a possible and minimise travel back and forward to the doctors. Children are also often more comfortable at a doctors surgery that they regularly visit for their healthy child checks, and this allows them to form a good relationship with the family doctor that can extend to the teen years when they need more support.
Context
It can be very useful for a doctor to have some context to a patient's health. If they see all of the people in a household they can get some context to physical and emotional challenges that each patient is experiencing. This means that they can treat any of the symptoms that they see appropriately, knowing whether an issue is likely to be a sign of a medical issue or simply a response to an environmental change.
Family history
Once a doctor has seen members of the same family they can get a sense of which issues the family might be vulnerable to, and even how they might respond to certain medications and treatments. If a doctor knows, for example, that the parents of a child are allergic to penicillin-based antibiotics they might elect to try the child on non-penicillin based antiobitiovs for common childhood issues such as ear infections. They can also often tell which issues and complications have been experienced in the past with family members, allowing them to target treatment with safer and more effective treatment plans.
Having this knowledge of the whole family can make it easier for the doctor to provide ideal, targeted health care.