Abstract

Highly successful in its first two editions, McWhinney's Textbook of Family Medicine is one of the seminal texts in the field. While many family medicine texts simply cover the disorders a practitioner might see in clinical practice (thus they become watered-down internal medicine texts), McWhinney defines the principles and practices of family medicine as a separate and distinct field of practice. His initial sections cover the basis principles and philosophies of family medicine and a later section discusses the approach to the patients with common diseases encountered in practice (these discussions not only address these clinical problems, but each is a workshop for incorporating what it means to be a family physician into everyday practice). The new edition is updated throughout with help from a group of reviewers and a new coauthor, Tom Freeman, who is Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at McWhinney's institution, the University of Western Ontario.