Supporting Our Clinical Preceptors
As family physicians, we can all appreciate clinical preceptors. During our own training, these are the generous individuals who introduced us to patient care and helped us develop skills to help patients in need. Our own preceptors have inspired many of us to become clinical preceptors ourselves.
Rewarding as clinical teaching can be, there are many competing demands on clinical preceptors. For example, there are more medical learners than clinical preceptors; leaners vary widely in stages of training; they also vary in disciplines, given that multidisciplinary teaching contexts are becoming more common in family medicine. Curricular innovations frequently require learners to be exposed to clinical settings earlier in their training, requiring clinical preceptors to provide these early educational exposures. Medical education innovations (such as the introduction and implementation of competency-based medical education) make for a dynamic environment requiring clinical preceptors to participate in faculty development activities. Competing daily demands on clinical preceptors - leading complex patient care, administration, participating in research and quality improvement, and caring for personal or family issues – make the challenges greater still. Finally, demand for family medicine teachers in other educational settings (outside of the clinic and in educational leadership) can make the role seem impossible.
To support our valued clinical preceptors as they navigate this myriad of challenges, many helpful resources have been developed by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC). Central to these is the Fundamental Teaching Activities (FTA) Framework which describes family medicine teaching activities and their potential development over time, encouraging teacher growth. Canadian Family Physician Teaching Moment articles are available to show how the FTA Framework can be operationalized. An associated resource repository, using the FTA Framework as an organizational guide has been created and is being maintained by the CFPC Faculty Development Education Committee (FDEC). This repository contains resources which support family medicine teaching. Educational activities can be captured and claimed for Mainpro+ credits, and FDEC is developing tools that will be recognized by Mainpro+ as facilitators to claim these credits. Interdisciplinary team environments can also be helpful to family medicine clinical preceptors as much of medical education takes place in multidisciplinary environments. FDEC also maintains a regular presence at Family Medicine Forum and other national and international conferences helping clinical preceptors become familiar with and to use these resources.
While family physician clinical preceptors’ work is inspiring and rewarding, there are substantial challenges that they face. In order to encourage family physicians’ continued contributions to clinical teaching, we must acknowledge their hard work, appreciate their efforts, and provide supporting resources and venues to promote a family medicine teaching community and ultimately thank them for their inspiring work as clinical preceptors. The work of CFPC and FDEC will continue to recognize and support our family medicine educators.
Dr. Sudha Koppula is Director of Faculty Development at the University of Alberta’s Department of Family Medicine and Chair of the Faculty Development Education Committee at the College of Family Physicians of Canada.
