Changes in Family Life and Challenges in Primary Care: The advent of the postmodern family.

Fragmentation of the postmodern family affects several aspects of primary care. In prevention, the physician-patient relationship is most important in forestalling abuse. In morbidity and diagnosis, single or socially isolated patients are more vulnerable to diseases, such as total allergy syndrome. In acute care, fragmentation increases the number of elderly patients in hospital. And in rehabilitation, the two-career family is no longer able to supplement hospital nursing care as it once did.