Mainpro®: From improvement of knowledge to improvement of performance

Francine Lemire

Dear Colleagues,

Mainpro^®, our continuing professional development (CPD) platform and program that allows our members to meet the CPD requirements for membership and maintenance of special designations, is an important area of connectivity with our members once they are in practice. Its importance is now heightened, as it has become a component of the maintenance and enhancement of physician performance programs of licensing authorities in most provinces.

Mainpro as we currently know it was introduced in 1997. Considerable forward thinking and review of the best evidence had gone on before its introduction. The College wanted to continue to support the many ways in which family physicians kept up with advances in knowledge, while at the same time nudging them into being more proactive in determining their learning needs and in reflecting on the effects of CPD activities on their practices.

Evolution

Certain influences bring us to reconsider the evolution of Mainpro, and to recommend changes. We are keen to inform and engage our members in discussion about this. Let us review some of the factors that stimulate this need for change.

Well, certain things do not change

Our health professional colleagues are the most important and trusted source of advice to answer questions arising out of practice. We need to be able to capture this dimension of knowledge acquisition and its effects on our practice.

Access to “just-in-time” information

The explosion of smartphone applications and online programming enables us to manage uncertainty very differently. The College needs to become better equipped to enable our members to easily acquire new knowledge through these means.

It is about capturing all the elements of the “skilled clinician.”

Much of CPD programming is focused on the clinical expert role. We all know that that dimension of the skilled clinician goes well beyond addressing knowledge. We need to better support our members in activities that enable them to improve performance in all of the roles they play (communicator, manager, professional, scholar, etc), and to be able to capture this in their CPD portfolios.

Support members in all elements of their CPD

Every year we receive requests for individual consideration by members who have been engaged in CPD that is relevant and important to them, but that our current system is not set up to capture. We need to recognize the many ways members keep up-to-date and capture this more easily.

Greater demand for accountability

Increasingly, physicians are expected to be accountable for positive outcomes in caring for their patients. We need to become more adept at determining our professional CPD needs, capturing the effects of CPD activities on our practices, and measuring the effects on performance.

Going forward

Details are important, obviously, and will be reviewed and submitted to the Board of your College for approval later this year. Our intent is to make Mainpro easier to understand, more intuitive, more relevant, more dynamic, and more interactive, better capturing not only how physicians keep up to date, but also how they enhance the excellent care they provide through their commitment to lifelong learning. The CFPC’s National Committee on Continuing Professional Development, as well as the Mainpro Standards Working Group, has played an important role in helping to shape our proposed direction; I want to thank them for all this work.

Participation in Mainpro will continue to be a requirement for Maintenance of Certification. Changes to Mainpro might have implications for how Fellowship is awarded. Members’ opinions have been sought over the past few years, and are helping to inform the deliberations of the Working Group on Maintenance of Certification and Fellowship. Elements being considered include an application process that would be initiated by members seeking such designations, and elements of “citizenship” to capture the many ways members act as agents of change in their communities.

In study lies our strength. Our College motto has served us well over the years. Let us make sure that we can continue to live by this motto at a time of considerable change in the organization of practice.