Table 1.

Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada CanMEDS framework key competencies for the role of health advocate

KEY COMPETENCIESENABLING COMPETENCIES
Physicians are able to ...
  • 1. Respond to an individual patient’s health needs by advocating with the patient within and beyond the clinical environment

  • 1.1 Work with patients to address determinants of health that affect them and their access to needed health services or resources

  • 1.2 Work with patients and their families to increase opportunities to adopt healthy behaviour

  • 1.3 Incorporate disease prevention, health promotion, and health surveillance into interactions with individual patients

  • 2. Respond to the needs of the communities or populations they serve by advocating with them for system-level change in a socially accountable manner

  • 2.1 Work with a community or population to identify the determinants of health that affect them

  • 2.2 Improve clinical practice by applying a process of continuous quality improvement to disease prevention, health promotion, and health surveillance activities

  • 2.3 Contribute to a process to improve health in the community or population they serve

  • Reproduced from Sherbino et al. Copyright Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.