Dr. Lynn P. Carmichael Photo Essay
Above: Portrait as first President of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) in 1968.
Above: Official seal of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM). Dr. Carmichael is credited with coming up with the name for the organization, which he coined based on the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine (now known as the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research), first organized in 1942.
Above: An extremely rare shot of Dr. Carmichael while attending the STFM Organizational Meeting in New York City in October 1967. Though a recognized leader for many years in the specialty, Dr. Carmichael was notoriously camera shy; few photos of him at professional gatherings have survived.
Above: An active member of the local medical community in Miami, Dr. Carmichael was a pioneer in establishing community health centers throughout South Florida, and both he and his residents provided medical care in poor urban neighborhoods, migrant labor camps, jails and other underserved areas in the region. In this May 1967 shot, he is shown receiving a plaque from the Dade County Board of County Commissioners.
"Family medicine is not general practice. The latter is disease centered and based on episodic care. Family medicine is health oriented, and offers comprehensive attention to the family... Family medicine will require specially trained physicians, not physicians half trained in a number of specialties."
- Dr. Carmichael in "Teaching Family Medicine," 1965*
*From Carmichael, LP: Teaching Family Medicine, JAMA 191(1):38-40 (Jan. 4) 1965.
Copyright © 1965 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission.
Above: The first Family Practice house staff at the University of Miami in June of 1966. Carmichael is seated, center.
Above: University of Miami house staff in Family Medicine, June 1968. Carmichael is standing at the back left.
During the 1970s, Dr. Carmichael wore a beard for a time– a symbol, according to one colleague, of his "great well roundedness" as "a progressive minded brilliant physician and an extraordinary down to earth kind man," as
this excerpt (1-page PDF file;
About PDFs) from the September 1976 issue of
Family Medicine Times serves to illustrate.
Above: Dr. Carmichael (center) leads a small discussion group at STFM's Annual Spring Conference held in San Diego in May 1978. Already by that time a legend among his peers, during that year he was also named the first recipient of the Society's Certificate of Excellence for his contributions to Family Medicine education.
In 1979, Dr. Carmichael served as one of the founding editors of STFM's new newsletter
Family Medicine Teacher (1-page PDF file;
About PDFs) which in 1981 was renamed
Family Medicine.
"I had, like most people in medicine, been raised with the idea that diseases existed and that our job was to treat diseases. But, we don't treat diseases; we take care of people... The meaning of 'family' in family medicine, to me, is not that the family is the unit of care as much as it is the process of care. It characterizes the type of relationship that you have with a person, a family-type relationship. The real healers are the patients. The goal of the physician should be to do whatever is necessary to enhance individuals' abilities to heal themselves. There is a tremendous amount of gratification and satisfaction that can come from this kind of medical practice. That to me is more important than the salary, the benefits, the prestige of being a doctor, and it is much more sustaining."
- Lynn Carmichael, MD, 1991
Above: Another rare shot with Carmichael taken at the Third Annual Primary Care Conference in Washington, DC, in April 1997. Pictured here from left to right are: Paul Nutting, MD, Dr. Carmichael and Roger Rosenblatt, MD, MPH– who are collectively called "the Triumvirate" in this photograph.
Above and below: Dr. Carmichael is pictured here while attending the
Keystone III Conference held in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 2000. The Keystone Conferences began in 1984 with Keystone I, followed by Keystone II in 1988 and finally Keystone III. The objective of Keystone III was to discuss the status of family practice after thirty years of development, while also seeking to facilitate the free exchange of ideas between three generations of family doctors: the "founding" generation (which included Dr. Carmichael), the "transition" generation, and the new, "emerging" generation.
"I've cared for some patients for more than 40 years. What patients need from us hasn't fundamentally changed: someone who knows them, whom they can trust and who can help them navigate the uncertainties of illness or the health care system."
- Dr. Carmichael at Keystone III, 2000
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