Chair's Message
In the April newsletter, I unveiled the revised Department vision, mission, guiding values and new strategic outcomes to direct our teaching, research, and clinical work over the next five years. This month, I want to expand on the details within our plan including specific strategies we will use to achieve our outcomes.
Within our new plan, five key strategies emerged to support reaching our outcomes over the next five years:
- Provide an exceptional learner experience
- Provide a learner-focused, forward-thinking curriculum
- Deliver high quality, patient-centred clinical care
- Produce research that matters
- Focus on social accountability
The Department of Family Medicine has always prided itself on providing an exceptional experience for our learners --- undergraduate, postgraduate, and graduate alike. One deliverable to advance our already superb educational experience is expanding opportunities for learners to engage working in interdisciplinary teams. We know this is the practice model that will allow for all providers to work at their full-scope and maximize the ability to care for a population of patients. Additionally, we will take what we learned through the pandemic and balance digital and traditional learning to maximize the benefits to learners and teachers. Realizing stress and burnout are significant challenges for learners and providers, we will have learning environments designed to support students’ mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Renewing and evolving our curriculums to ensure learners are developing the competencies they require, and providing them the knowledge and skills they need for success, is part of our second key strategy. This renewal will touch on curriculum design, content, and assessment. In undergraduate education for example, this will involve earlier and more frequent exposure to a generalist approach and what a career in family medicine could look like. In postgraduate education, our work will revolve around the College of Family Physicians journey to a comprehensive, 3-year residency curriculum to ensure residents graduate with all the competencies they need to feel prepared to work in a full-scope family medicine practice serving a diverse population of patients. Within our postgraduate program, we will examine the best practices to create the academics, researchers, and leaders of tomorrow and aim to deliver an integrated and focused curriculum with tangible outcomes for our students.
Patients and clinical care are at the centre of all we do, so we plan to lead in the delivery of high quality, high value care to our patients. Addressing both comprehensive and focused care within family medicine, we will aim to create more equity in the care we deliver by increasing our recognition of social determinants of health and the barriers patients encounter trying to access care. In addition, continuing to be leaders in providing patient-centred clinical care, we will incorporate digital technologies to enhance both the delivery of care as well as using technology to enhance the patient-physician relationship.
On a tradition of generating leading research within Family Medicine and Primary Care, we will continue to produce research that matters. Supporting our current researchers and cultivating emerging researchers through mentorship and tangible supports will allow our department to champion clinically related research and quality improvement, translate research advancements into practice, and impact the health care system as well as the delivery of care at the front lines.
Our final, and one of the most important strategies we have committed to, is being more socially accountable. Whether in teaching, research, or delivering clinical care, we plan to embed equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization principles into all activities. We will intentionally partner with patients and community providers to build relationships and work with them to close gaps in health disparities. We will increase the diversity of representation within our students, staff, and faculty and work to be seen as leaders in advocacy, service, and outreach to equity deserving, underserved, and rural communities.
I realize these are lofty goals and it will take time, hard work, and dedication to succeed. In the end, we will be a stronger and better Department of Family Medicine that will attract the best students and faculty and produce the highest quality Family Physician clinicians, researchers, educators, and leaders.
I hope you see the work that you do everyday with and for the Department of Family Medicine in our future direction. Please reach out with suggestions and ideas to help move us forward. I would love to hear how you feel you could contribute to the work we will be doing. Let’s start a conversation, please email me at smckay28@uwo.ca – we can’t do this without you, and I would truly appreciate you being involved in our Department’s journey towards our vision of “Transforming healthcare… Optimizing the health and well-being of patients and communities.”
