What is the scope of practice for family physicians?
The scope of a family doctor’s practice is broad and flexible–ranging from the most comprehensive style of family medicine, in which the family physician treats patients in the hospital, office, nursing home, and in occupational and school settings, not to mention performing surgical procedures and delivering infants–to the family physician who limits his or her practice to outpatient care, often in a group setting. Most family physicians function somewhere between these two extremes and are able to tailor-make their practice to particular interests and niches, such as such as sports medicine, geriatrics, preventive and public health, international health, women’s health, or adolescent health. Many perform major or minor surgeries and procedures, including Caesarean sections, vasectomies, flexible sigmoidoscopy, colposcopy, skin biopsy and lesion removal, cryotherapy of skin lesions and the cervix, cervical biopsy, endometrial biopsy, spirometry, exercise treadmill testing, splinting
