Opportunistic Prevention in Family Medicine: Anticipatory Care, Case-Finding and Continuity of Care

Jose Luis Turabian

Abstract

The concept of "prevention" is important in medicine, especially in family medicine, and it includes specific tasks of primary care. The conceptual basis of these tasks is “opportunistic prevention”, because every contact with patients provides opportunities for the prevention of illness and the encouragement of people to adopt more healthy life-styles, even when the patient has come for an apparently unrelated problem which has to be dealt with first. The emphasis is on taking the opportunities offered by patients. Family medicine presents a unique position to do “opportunistic prevention", which includes at least: Anticipatory care, Case-finding, and Continuity of Care. But, these concepts have important, different, and specific connotations, and its implications have not been sufficiently systematized conceptually. These tasks can be difficult to explain and understand. So, these concepts are presented based on a fable or tale. The fable is an adult education method which can serve to intuitively understand abstract concepts, by linking them to specific situations, and so to facilitate their assimilation. The essence of family medicine is to assist individuals in families and communities, and this implies, to be a "doctor lark" - who arrives early: with a good Continuity of Care, Anticipatory Care, and “Case Finding”. The challenge is to combine these anticipatory care, case finding and continuity of care, addressing the heterogeneity of needs and achieving individual and contextualized solutions.