Building support for team-based care

In late February 2024 the Team Primary Care (TPC) Summit brought together leaders from across Canada to discuss primary care training.¹ The goal of the summit was to highlight results of and lessons learned from the TPC initiative. It was a great meeting and a real showcase of what can be achieved with interprofessional teamwork. During the summit participants issued a call to action urging governments to support reforms designed to help health care professionals work in team-based care.²

While the TPC initiative wrapped up on March 31, 2024, the project provided evidence that backs what the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) has been advocating since 2011: that team-based care is the way of the future and that it supports patients, the health care system, and family physicians. Team-based care, as described in the Patient’s Medical Home vision,³ increases access to health care for patients, decreases health care system costs, reduces family physicians’ administrative burden, and improves health care provider satisfaction.⁴

Many clinics have family doctors and other health care providers working under the same roof, but these groups often practise in discipline-specific silos.⁴ The CFPC continues to call on governments to direct funding not only to Patient’s Medical Home–aligned practices, but also to infrastructure that enables them and to training that will help family physicians work in them effectively.

To help prepare future family physicians for providing care to patients when and where they need it, the CFPC seeks to refresh education standards through curriculum renewal.

While the College has ceased the implementation of a mandatory third year of family medicine residency training,⁵ it continues to support the development of new curricula that enhance the preparedness of family medicine graduates to practise in team-based care settings and to optimize their scope of training, all while supporting family physicians’ changing roles in the health care system.⁶

As of March 2024 medical schools and university-based family medicine residency programs have put curriculum renewal plans in place. They have also completed change-readiness assessment reports that show how close they are to expectations outlined in the Residency Training Profile.⁷

Curriculum renewal plans set medical schools up for the “next step of implementation. From there, [the CFPC] will rely on schools and provinces to plan for implementation [and] spark local innovation.”⁶

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the CFPC, and other organizations continue to update the CanMEDS 2015 Physician Competency Framework, which will be used to help us “respond to current societal needs and those expected in the next 10 years.”⁸

As the sole national organization dedicated to family doctors, the CFPC advocates for changes that will improve the health and well-being of members and simultaneously benefit patient care. Changes in training and education will ensure future family doctors will be prepared to thrive in our evolving health care landscape.

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