The conceptual elements and skills that promote the mastery of family medicine, such as contextual knowledge, continuity of care, the clinical interview, comprehensiveness, coordination, and so on, are often difficult to explain and to understand. Medicine is often learned through a mechanistic metaphor of biology and a military metaphor of war. However, these fundamental concepts of family medicine have nothing to do with the metaphor of the machine or the metaphor of war. In this book, "The Family Doctors: Images and Metaphors of the Family Doctor to Learn Family Medicine", these concepts are explained through metaphors that are more explanatory, nicer, sweeter, and more playful. Thus, among other metaphors, the family doctor is presented as the genie in Aladdin's lamp, as a drinker of Chinese tea, a classic painter, an explorer on a desert island, as a bass, a plug, a photographer, an historian, a person eating spaghetti or cherries, a cat, a civil engineer, a catalyst, a meteorologist, a detective, a fisherman rather than a hunter, a sculptor, a sea turtle, a golfer, a filter coffee, a diver, a poet, a billiards player, a mother who picks up her baby, and a nuts and bolts mechanism. Thinking based on metaphors and comparisons is a way of making a concept so suggestive, interesting and surprising, that it reaches people more easily. The value of family medicine lies in its distinctiveness from academic medicine. Thus, the family doctor should be encouraged to use a non-conventional form when thinking about the problems that are presented in the consultation, for example, thinking on the basis of metaphors. CommentaryThe family doctor is the general practitioner who assumes professional responsibility for attention to the whole patient, not selecting according to undifferentiated problems, and who has committed himself to the person independent of age, sex, disease, organs or corporal systems. The clinical specialty of family medicine focuses on the patient. It is based on evidence, centered on the family, and orientated to the problem. Family physicians acquire and maintain a wide range of skills that depend on the needs of the patients and the communities they serve. The scope of their practice is not defined by diagnoses or procedures, but by human needs. Family physicians do not treat diseases; they take care of people. The nodal points in the life cycle of the family, such as birth, severe illness, and end of life, deserve special attention. Family physicians are experts in the management of common problems, recognizing the important diseases, discovering hidden conditions, and managing acute and chronic diseases [1-3].Family physicians emphasize health promotion and disease prevention. Their knowledge, skills, and attitudes are directed to the practice community, and are based on current scientific knowledge and focused on the continuous improvement in quality. Family practice requires special skills to be able to identify concerns, negotiate plans and help to solve problems. The recognition, int...

The transcendence of psychological factors of the doctor-patient relationship is given by the fact of its infl uence on results and quality of medical care, improvement in compliance, satisfaction and recall of physician information, and plays a fundamental role in the medical care process: the skills Listening and communication are fundamental parts to make the diagnosis and treatment. Some of these positive consequences arise from the fact that relationships are linked to emotions which have a physiological substrate. The different psychological behaviors of the patient and the doctor (such as verbal and nonverbal communication, affective behavior, beliefs, empathy, listening), symptom perception, shared decision, negotiation, information, persuasion, etc., give different types of relationship. In doctor-patient relationship there is a modality of psychotherapy, where the treatment is based on that relationship, in which the general practitioner and the patient work together to improve psychopathological conditions through the focus on the therapeutic relationship, which brings consequences on thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The therapeutic function of the doctor-patient relationship can be understood in analogy to dialysis, in which the patient experience of illness passes through the clinician's compassionate equanimity for affective detoxifi cation and cognitive clarifi cation. Also, the work of the general practitioner can be understood as a psycho-physiological doctor-patient relationship process through which the doctor and the patient can infl uence the health of the other. Doctor-patient relationship evaluation has to be carried out jointly by both, doctor and patient, on the effect that both are achieving with that relationship. "The disease is like removing the soil where a tree is planted: the roots are exposed, and you can see how deep and strong they are." Virginia Woolf (1882-1941; English writer).

The transcendence of the doctor-patient relationship is given by the confirmed fact of its influence on the results of health care. Several models of doctor-patient relationship can be described, but evidence of improved compliance, satisfaction and recall of physician information has been found in patient-centered consultations. Since these concepts of doctor-patient relationship and patient-centered consultation have multiple facets, they are complex to understand and teach. Using a metaphor is a tool that can be useful in these situations. We could say that the "good" doctor-patient relationship is a process where an "alliance" is created: a process in which the doctor adapts to the rhythm of the patient and little by little can help him move towards healthier scenarios; that is, detect "what dance the patient dances and like a good dancer, take a step back, another forward, dancing and pacing with the patient. But there is not a single type of "good" or "adequate" doctor-patient relationship; there is not "a single dance that the patient dances". If "the doctor has to dance with the patient", he has to know that there are many types of dance! The doctor will have to dance dances such as Cha-Cha (which has to be slow or very fast to dance), the Mambo (where the music is faster and the rhythm more complicated - the relationship with an urgent patient); the Merengue (which is danced like walking - informal doctor-patient relationship); el Pasodoble (that you have to dance with a haughty air, but not with rigidity -synchronizing assertiveness and empathy); The Salsa (where you have to learn the basic step separately - discontinuity of the doctor-patient relationship), among others.

What is traditionally called individual, family and community care are elements of the same reality and cannot be separated. The genogram is an instrument or tool of the biopsychosocial model that gives information about the patient, their family and context, and that implies a prognostic value and useful information for the consultation. The biomedical family history means collecting problems of genetic transmission, but from the biopsychosocial point of view it can go much further: the elaboration of the genogram produces a therapeutic link with the family, implying a qualitative change in the relationship; the genogram gives rise hypotheses -in circular terms-about patients' risks for family related illnesses or stressors, such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, substance abuse, and depression; It allows developing a provisional explanation about how the family system is organized around a problem; genogram shows events of family life, transitions and turning points, that mean opportunistic prevention and treatment moments. "Complex" genograms present families with psychosocial problems that can be expressed like biomedical problems. The genogram can be used as a screening system in all patients, at their first glance, regardless of the problem that motivates their consultation, to identify biological or psychosocial problems that would manifest themselves later. It is advisable to make "feasible" genograms avoiding excessive information that paralyzes understanding and intervention. The genograms are a fixed photograph of the family at a certain moment, and the concept of "chronogram" should be incorporated (evolution of the same genogram after the time).

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