It’s hard to predict a conversation’s path when the talk takes place between professionals who are steeped in a common enterprise and passionate about their work.
Still, Gayle Stephens, a founder of the Family Medicine Movement, suspected something good would come of a conversation he initiated more than 30 years ago. He was right.
Just talk
In 1984, the family physician, writer, thinker and teacher brought together personal friends and others from diverse backgrounds to talk about family medicine.
They shared ideas and identified challenges and opportunities that warranted the attention of family physicians and medicine as a profession. Known as The Keystone Conference, the dialogue proved so productive that follow-up conferences ensued. The third Keystone Conference inspired the Future of Family Medicine project, the roadmap for family medicine through the early years of the 21st century.
Though Gayle passed away last year, the conversation continues. In 2014, the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation established “The G. Gayle Stephens Keystone Conference Series.” It commemorates Gayle’s stature as a pioneer in family medicine and a founder of the Foundation.
Arts, sciences, scope for the imagination
As a college student, Gayle found the strong tradition in the sciences and the arts invaluable. It broadened his mind and equipped him for future conversations. In time, he would help audiences at home and abroad see how medical practice relates to history, philosophy, religion, psychiatry, the family, the community and the sciences. In time, he would also win agreement. Family medicine is now the largest specialty in medicine.
Family medicine: a counter culture
Ever a fierce advocate for family medicine, Gayle called it a counter-culture within medicine. He described it as a movement manifested in personal relationships.
“My hope is that we can find leaders who are willing to rethink the priorities of medical education on the basis of medical needs of the public rather than on the basis of preserving the professional self-interest of organized medicine.”
Dr. Gayle Stephens
He saw family doctors as agents of change.
“Our ‘expert’ institutions and organizations have exposed themselves to be bastions of resistance, self-interest, and exploiters of the public purse. More than anything else, they resemble the medieval clergy in maintaining their death-grip on privilege, power and self-aggrandizement.”
Gayle exercised creativity by connecting realities, articulating those connections, and bringing others along. He plied the art of conversation to explore possibilities. And, to use the words of writer Naawal El Saadawi, the connections he made in the process ”[abolished] the gap between the body, the mind and the soul” and. the gap “between science and art.”
Talk is cheap, they say, but in the worlds inhabited by minds like Gayle Stephens, it’s a treasure.
A version of this article originally appeared on greenville.edu. Images from top to bottom: (1) Conversation: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (2) Rhythm Curve Family by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (3) Thinker by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay (4) Non-conformist: by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
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