DALLAS \u2013 Dr. I. L. Balkcom IV has been sworn in as president of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. It came during the group\u2019s Annual Session and Scientific Assembly in Dallas. Dr. Balkcom is a physician with the Medical-Surgical Clinic in Sulphur Springs. <\/p>\n
In Balkcom\u2019s presidential address, he listed some of the terms used for family physicians and described his frustrations with being called \u201cjust a general practitioner.\u201d Instead of being called a GP or a gatekeeper, he told the audience he wants to be a \u201cshepherd\u201d of the people. \u201cI want to lead them, I want to love them, and I want to take care of them from the time they\u2019re born, and even before they\u2019re born, to the time they leave us. That\u2019s what we should strive for, to be a good shepherd.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spoke directly to TAFP members when he asked for their help to reinvigorate the specialty, to achieve the recognition and appreciation deserved for family physicians\u2019 full breadth of practice. \u201cI cannot do it alone, nor do I intend to. I\u2019m going to ask you if you can donate five minutes for family medicine. That\u2019s going to be my battle cry: Give five minutes for family medicine. Take the message to your colleagues and friends. It\u2019s time for us to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALLAS \u2013 Dr. I. L. Balkcom IV has been sworn in as president of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. It came during the group\u2019s Annual Session and Scientific Assembly in Dallas. Dr. Balkcom is a physician with the Medical-Surgical Clinic in Sulphur Springs. In Balkcom\u2019s presidential address, he listed some of the terms used … Continue reading Sulphur Springs Doctor is the TAFT President<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 00:04:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115641"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115978,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115641\/revisions\/115978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}