Some of my earliest memories of medicine involve trying to follow my dad to work.

My father is a family physician, and when I was a small boy, I once climbed into one of those little toy cars with pedals and drove after him as he left for work. I made it out into the road before my mom caught me. When she asked what I was doing, I told her I just wanted to go to work with Dad.

Even then, I think I was drawn to more than the idea of medicine. I admired the life I saw him living. He knew his patients, their families and their stories. He was part of the community in a way that extended far beyond the clinic.

Years later, during college and medical school, my interest in science confirmed that medicine was the right path. I shadowed many specialties, but family medicine kept pulling me back. It offered something I had seen growing up but could not yet fully describe: the opportunity to care for people across the full span of life.

What keeps me hooked now is the depth of those relationships. In family medicine, we are present for both the routine moments and the life-changing ones. Often the most important thing we do is listen, then help patients make sense of decisions that can feel overwhelming.

One patient during residency made that reality especially clear.

I had cared for him and his wife for more than a year. He was the kind of patient who made clinic visits enjoyable. He loved cars, worked on them constantly, and always had a story to tell. Then one fall, after what initially seemed like a minor injury, he was found to have a rapidly growing malignant tumor. Within weeks, his life changed completely.

Because of the different roles we hold in family medicine, I saw him across many settings. I cared for him in clinic, helped admit him through the ED when his pain became unbearable, and later worked with him during a palliative care rotation as he faced difficult decisions about what the future would hold. Much of my role was not performing procedures or ordering tests. It was helping translate complicated medical conversations into something meaningful for him and his family.

A few weeks later, his former primary care physician and I visited him at home. He was resting in a hospital bed in his living room, surrounded by his family. He was weak and speaking was difficult, but he recognized us. As we sat together, his family pulled out photos of the cars he had spent years restoring and showing. We talked quietly about the car shows he loved and the life he had built around those passions. At one point he made a small joke about wanting some moonshine, and his wife brought him a drink. He could only respond briefly, sometimes with a nod or a faint smile, but it was clear he was present with us. Much of the visit was simply sitting together, listening and honoring the life he had lived.

In that moment, I was reminded that family medicine is not only about diagnosing disease or managing medications. It is about knowing people well enough to sit beside them during the most important moments of their lives.

After residency, I plan to return home to Idaho to practice family medicine in the same kind of community where my interest in medicine first began. Going home matters to me because it is where I first saw what a family doctor could mean to a community, and it is where I hope to spend my life building that same kind of trust.

If I am fortunate, years from now my patients will describe their doctor in simple terms: someone who listens, who cares, and who is there when it matters most.

That is what keeps me hooked on primary care.

Derek B. Southwick, MD
Resident member, American Academy of Family Physicians Board of Directors