Education in family medicine--gains and dangers.

This editorial discusses the emerging evidence base for using family medicine as a core setting for medical training, and evaluates the challenges and impacts of this role on family medicine practice. Substantive, well designed educational opportunities can be effectively delivered in family medicine, and this has positive impacts on learning of clinical medicine, student attitudes towards patients, their understanding of population health, their choice of careers, and their respect for family medicine as a discipline. However, a poor standard of clinical practice and a lack of capacity in community based health care facilities could militate against such results being sustained and replicated in all countries. Medical schools in all parts of the world should be considering whether their family medical system can sustain a useful input to their curricula, and seeking to support colleagues in family medicine to develop their disciplinary base, because of the valuable contribution they can make to education as well as patient care and research.