Enhancing family medicine practice in developing countries through a holistic-comprehensive care model: A review

Background: The family medicine practice is a model for delivery of health care to the entire population, enhancing a patient focused and integrated primary health care systems. Unlike other medical specialties, family medicine practice includes biological, psychological, socio-spiritual, and all disease entities. Although considerable researches have been devoted to explain the concept of family medicine, rather less attention has been paid to its practice in developing countries. This study aims to review the empirical literature on a holistic-comprehensive care model implemented in family medicine practice particularly in developing countries. Method: This study reviews alternative approaches to understand what “best practice” in family medicine is. The authors searched ‘family medicine practice’, or ‘family medicine’, ‘primary health care’ and ‘developing countries’ and ‘holistic’, and ‘comprehensive’ in address field from Google Scholars, Proquest and ScienceDirect dating from 2003 to 2019. Sixteen articles were included in the study out of 171 articles reviewed. Result: A holistic-comprehensive care model consists of four primary concepts of care: clinical care, professional behavior in clinical practice, family medicine practice management and clinical practice facilities and equipment. Discussion and Conclusion: The future studies of family medicine practice could focus on the promotion of a more sustainable delivery of healthcare. This study concludes by synthesizing concepts for a new family medicine practice, and suggests how a holistic-comprehensive model might contribute to thinking about the future of family medicine practice in developing countries.