STFM Blog

by Peter Coggan, MD

Editors Note: The Winter 2023 STFM Blog features guest author and long-time STFM member Peter Coggan, MD, on the importance of preserving the sanctity of the physician-patient relationship through financial support of the STFM Foundation.

At the beginning of my career, looking back on it, like many faculty in the 1970s I was recruited out of private practice where I had enjoyed teaching medical students and residents rotating through my office. I approached my new role as full-time faculty with enthusiasm and rapidly realized that I was ill-prepared for it.

My first STFM meeting in 1979 was a revelation that was both exhilarating and intimidating. The plethora of workshops, presentations, and other activities were exactly what I needed, and, equally important, were the casual hallway conversations with other attendees – all of us struggling with many of the same questions. These were conversations in which shared problems were openly discussed, mistakes freely disclosed, and solutions offered but, perhaps most important of all, these were conversations that grew into mentorships and friendships over the years. I had found my academic home and in it a place that, at the heart of it all, would help me to realize my desire to teach the physicians of the future to provide better care and in doing so, become a better physician myself.

The middle of my career, as I look back on it, was marked by an increasing involvement with STFM – an almost unbroken attendance for 35 years at the national meeting – the privilege of running the Pre-Doc meeting (now retitled as the Conference on Medical Student Education), participating in multiple presentations, serving on STFM committees and the STFM Board of Directors (twice, in fact) and, with each experience, learning skills that were invaluable to my career.

In the autumn of my career, as I look back on it, the urging of Roger Sherwood (our then Executive Director), led me to the Foundation Board and the discovery of a wonderful opportunity to pay back for all that I had received through my membership in STFM through the Foundation’s many programs and initiatives.

Today in my dotage, as I look back on it, there is the grateful recognition that I could not have had the career opportunities that came my way without STFM. It is also gratifying to reflect on the many members I have met along the way who have become leaders in our field, with successful careers of their own as they carry the STFM mission forward.  Their innovations in presentations and projects first aired in the early and middle years of my STFM membership have, in many instances, joined the mainstream in teaching and patient care. And our specialty is much the better for it.

As for tomorrow, as I look forward to it, I close this brief homily. I hope you will forgive me for a reflection born of, as William Wordsworth expresses it “the inward eye that is the bliss of solitude”. Excellence in the care of patients and their families is the goal we all share in our teaching and our personal practice. Within that, and central to it, is the importance of the doctor-patient relationship, which is a core value for STFM, its Foundation, and the specialty of family medicine. As the practice of medicine continues to evolve as it must, new ways to identify and treat medical problems and ways to communicate with our patients will become everyday tools and, in this context, I look with confidence to STFM to ensure the doctor-patient relationship is preserved. After all, that relationship is central to the practice of medicine, the most intimate and personal of the professions, and, should it not survive, our profession will fade into obscurity.

That, as I look forward to, is the context in which I hope you will join me in supporting the STFM Foundation. My motivation, at the heart of it all, is my wish for you to teach the physicians of the future to provide better care and in doing so, become a better physician yourself, enhancing and preserving that essential quality of our profession – the sanctity of the physician-patient relationship.

We invite you to join Dr Coggan in ensuring future generations of family medicine educators continue to have access to the invaluable STFM resources. Just as the personal and professional contributions you’ve made to family medicine education have undoubtedly had a profound impact on those you’ve met, mentored, led, and collaborated with throughout your journey, a bequest to the STFM Foundation Endowment ensures that impact for generations to come. Your contribution directly supports STFM initiatives and programming like scholarship opportunities for underrepresented in medicine (URM) learners and educators, research grants, conferences, curricula, and more. The STFM Foundation Trustees created the Foundation Endowment to provide a mechanism for passionate family medicine educators to contribute to the long-term success of the STFM Foundation and STFM as a whole.