With Ivy oandasan
The Canadian governments have described ambitious visions of care and interprofessional cooperation based on the team to tackle a crisis of primary care, with 6.5 million people not having access to a regular family doctor. However, a fundamental political contradiction undermines these efforts: While family medicine explores the way doctors prepare for the primary care based on the group, other health professions do not have equivalent training requirements.
Since 2010, the College of family doctors in Canada He has created a strong case through the levers of educational policy in accreditation and certification, aligned with them Patient’s medical vision and Primary Care Recipe 2.0 to support family medicine residents to acquire skill in Can-Meds-FM Expert Role and the CAN-MEDS-FM Partner Role They work in interprofessional groups throughout the context in which family doctors work, especially in primary care.
Nursing, pharmacies, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and other health professions operate with general intervals, but do not have specific orders to learn in the context of primary care with other primary care professionals to provide integrated and integrated primary care. The workforce for health care of interdisciplinary primary care is not deliberately prepared for a group -based practice.
Federal funding Group Primary Care Initiative -The participation of 40 groups, over 20 health professions and more than 100 partners’ organizations-has revealed that most health professions do not have pre-existing primary care programs, despite the expectations that they work effectively in primary care groups.
Canada’s health January 2025 Labor Study It validates these concerns, explicitly recommending that “vocational education and training of health should be structured in terms of the necessary primary care capabilities”.
THE 2002 Romanow Commission He apparently warned of the crisis of today’s workforce and prescribed a solution: health care providers to work effectively. After that, the federal government started the Interdisciplinary Training for Practice Initiative with Cooperative Patientrecognizing that group -based care offers superior patient results.
Primary care has unique requirements that require a specific interdisciplinary preparation. Barbara Starfield’s fundamental work Four features were identified-the “4 C”-to prioritize primary care from other healthcare arrangements:
- First contact: Primary care serves as a point of entry of the health system, demanding providers to evaluate the undifferentiated health problems and to coordinate appropriate care pathways.
- Information: Primary care addresses the full range of health needs during life, integration of prevention, acute care, chronic diseases management and health promotion.
- Coordination: Primary health professionals must incorporate all aspects of care, ensuring uninterrupted transitions while maintaining the overall care of patients.
- Continue: Primary care includes continuous relationships over time, building therapeutic collaborations that enhance the effectiveness of care.
The current training vacuum creates fragmented care, inadequately used team members and overwhelmed family doctors. Despite growing group -based practice models, many healthcare professionals do not have primary care preparation and interdisciplinary training in primary care.
The current training vacuum creates fragmented care, inadequately used team members and overwhelmed family doctors.
We need systematic reform throughout Vocational Health Education:
Develop Primary Care Abilities for all health care professions working in primary care, adjusting existing interdisciplinary frameworks to include 4 C of Starfield.
Alignment of accreditation requirements, so that professional healthcare providers require demonstration of primary care capabilities, not only in general teamwork skills.
Create funding incentives that reward the programs by preparing graduates for primary care practice, with improved support for the training of primary care.
Primary care report, so that all health professions working in primary care to show the basic understanding through the requirements of the curriculum.
The infrastructure for change is: Interdisciplinary Education framework, accreditation bodies, professional health schools and policy impulse. What is missing is the coordinated action that extends primary care requirements beyond family medicine.
This requires cooperation in all areas. Professional health programs must incorporate primary care capabilities into interdisciplinary approaches. Accreditation bodies must require primary care preparation for occupations working in primary care arrangements. Government funders should prioritize innovative funding for the preparation of the Primary Care Team. Health system leaders must recognize that effective primary care groups require all members to understand the primary care frameworks.
Canada cannot solve the crisis of primary care without considering the needs of preparing all health professionals who have envisioned to work in the context of primary care -based care. True interpretering primary care requires symmetrical preparation-all team members must develop primary care skills to provide the integrated, coordinated, community-oriented care that requires primary care. They must have intentional learning provided in a primary care framework they learn, from and with other professional health trainees.
There is the vision. The need is urgent. The solution requires the expansion of primary care requirements beyond family medicine to create truly prepared primary care groups.
Ivy Oandasan, MD MHSC EMBA CCFP FCFP, Professor in Family and Community Medicine Department, Temerty School of Medicine, University of Toronto.
www.linkedin.com/in/oandasan
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Previously published In Healthydebate.ca with Creative Commons license
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Post The Training Gap that undermines Canada’s primary care groups first appeared in Good Men.
