Generalists and Specialists-Reply

Abstract

In Reply.— As a family physician and family practice educator, I have no quarrel with Dr McMillen's assessment of medical care in the real world and, in fact, share his enjoyment of office and community hospital medical practice. Both he and Dr Davidson 1 have taken my letter as a criticism of the competence and viability of the primary care internist when it was intended as a commentary on the traditional academic perspective. Although I trained in family practice, a good deal of my time was spent in contact with internal medicine residents, practitioners, and faculty. In this academic setting, residents aspired to the knowledge, skills, and roles of their faculty mentors—academic subspecialty internists who themselves pursued the goal of becoming Dr Petersdorf's 2 triple threat academicians. Although often acknowledged as good physicians and sometimes as astute clinicians, practitioners of general internal medicine were not the role models for these residents.