As the profession of marriage and family therapy (MFT), as well as the emerging sub-specialty of medical family therapy (MedFT), continue to grow and evolve within the current healthcare system, the arena of integrated primary care (IPC) presents an ideal environment for professionals who are relationally and systemically inclined. Although there has been a inundation of literature detailing collaborative systems of healthcare, several gaps still exist: (a) a lack of horizontally integrated models (i.e., models that do not target specific diseases or demographic populations), (b) a lack of model utilization regardless of disease trajectory (i.e., decline, stabilization, improvement), and (c) a lack of IPC models explicitly utilizing MedFT/MFTs as the mental health providers within the system. In lieu of these gaps, the authors present a framework for IPC, utilizing MedFTs/MFTs, that is neither population nor disease specific, as well as a model geared towards implementation regardless of disease trajectory. The framework, which was obtained using ethnography of communication, details MedFTs' interactions with front line medical providers and patients from initial contact through coordination of a shared treatment plan. Recommendations for future research studies incorporating the use of MedFTs in integrated primary care settings are extended in the context of a three world view framework (Peek in Collaborative medicine case studies: Evidence in practice.

This article examines the conceptual and practice relationship between medical family therapy (MedFT) and its parent field, family therapy, with MedFT viewed as the extension of relational sense‐making and understanding into a specific venue; that of medicine. The extension of this relational meaning system into medicine is typified by the ability of the therapist to negotiate and connect three main areas of conceptual difference that often account for conflictual relationships between mental and biomedical healthcare providers: (i) patient and provider conceptualizations of issues and goals, (ii) linear and circular understanding of issues and goals and (iii) consultative and expert positions on issues and goals. Two case examples are offered to describe how these three areas of tension are reconciled in practice.

True integration requires a shift in all levels of medical and allied health education; one that emphasizes team learning, practicing, and evaluating from the beginning of each students’ educational experience whether that is as physician, nurse, psychologist, or any other health profession. Integration of healthcare services will not occur until medical education focuses, like the human body, on each system working inter-dependently and cohesively to maintain balance through continual change and adaptation. The human body develops and maintains homeostasis by a process of communication: true integrated care relies on learned interprofessionality and ensures shared responsibility and practice.

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