What is the difference between General Practice and Family Practice?

In medicine, general practice refers to the practice that offers primary or essential health care services to people. It requires lesser years of medical education compared to family practice. A doctor that provides this health care service is called a General Practitioner (GP).

Family practice refers to the medical specialty that is committed to taking care of health concerns of people across all ages. A doctor specialized in this specialty is called a family doctor or a family physician. A physician goes to more years of medical training before he or she can become a family physician.

Family practice means that the doctor will be in charge of the health of the whole family. There are family doctors who can attend to different families and they will be the ones that families will call if there is sickness in the family or if someone would need medical attention.

General practice means that doctors will be familiar with the different areas of medicine. This means that these doctors will be familiar with gynecology, pediatrics, and so much more. There are some general doctors that can be seen in clinics that can be open 24 hours and they will assess if people would need to be seen by specialists depending on their condition.