Family Medicine is a unique specialty which focuses on provision of curative and preventive Primary Health Care services to all age groups as a point of first contact within the context of the family and community.  The Pakistan Medical Council (PMC) issued a directive in 2014 to all medical colleges in the country to establish departments of Family Medicine to train students in this specialty in the final year.  Shifa College of Medicine took the initiative and this resulted in establishment of the Section of Family Medicine as its most recent clinical department. This is the first Family Medicine section in the Federal region of Pakistan which is established for training undergraduate medical students in this field. Our purpose is to provide a fruitful experience to our medical graduates regarding common health problems faced by our population. We focus on the acquisition of sound and evidence-based clinical knowledge with robust examination skills by our students. We also focus on good consultation skills with real life encounters with patients in our community clinics. All these activities are supervised by experienced Faculty members trained in Family Medicine.

We hope that our graduates would be motivated to pursue Family Medicine as a specialty in future and provide essential care to communities in need.

Recent achievements

Family Medicine is delivered through our community clinics with the prime example being our clinic in Nurpur Shahan near Bari Imam. The clinic is a joint venture of Rotary Club Islamabad and Shifa Foundation. It has a substantial turnover of patients with an average of 50-80 patents per day consisting mostly of women and children. Apart from curative care, we also provide preventive services like immunizations and Family Planning. Patients are seen by consultant Family Physicians at nominal rates and provided with free medicines. This venture is sustainable through support of the organizations involved as well as philanthropic donations from faculty, staff and students.