Holding the complex whole: Generalist philosophy, priorities and practice that facilitate whole-person care.

Background: Generalist work is often complex, especially in the face of undifferentiated, uncertain, uncomfortable or unremitting presentations. This complexity can be exacerbated by difficult social circumstances and health system constraints, as well as by dissonance between patient and clinician conceptions of ideal care.

Objective: This article offers philosophical and practical encouragement to help general practitioners (GPs) 'be with' patients, care for their own needs and value their complex work.

The Craft of Generalism clinical skills and attitudes for whole person care.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: Generalists manage a broad range of biomedical and biographical knowledge as part of each clinical encounter, often in multiple encounters over time. The sophistication of this broad integrative work is often misunderstood by those schooled in reductionist or constructivist approaches to evidence. There is a need to describe the practical and philosophically robust ways that understanding about the whole person is formed.

Transdisciplinary Generalism: Naming the epistemology and philosophy of the generalist.

Background: Transdisciplinary research and generalist practice both face the task of integrating and discerning the value of knowledge across disciplinary and sectoral knowledge cultures. Transdisciplinarity and generalism also both offer philosophical and practical insights into the epistemology, ontology, axiology, and logic of seeing the 'whole'. Although generalism is a skill that can be used in many settings from industry to education, the focus of this paper is the literature of the primary care setting (i.

Beyond symptoms: defining primary care mental health clinical assessment priorities, content and process.

The assessment of undifferentiated psychological distress is a daily aspect of primary care practice. Primary care practitioners' underlying values influence the priorities, process and content of assessment. Currently there is a lack of definition of these values in primary care clinical mental health assessment.