Task Force Report 3. Report of the Task Force on Continuous Personal, Professional, and Practice Development in Family Medicine

Abstract

PURPOSE This Future of Family Medicine task force report proposes a plan for lifelong learning that is designed to ensure family physicians are prepared to deliver the core attributes and system services of family medicine throughout their careers, especially within the New Model of family medicine that has been proposed.

METHODS This report is based on consideration of the proposed New Model for family medicine, along with a careful review of the data generated through research conducted for the Future of Family Medicine project. The personal and professional development of family physicians and the continuous improvement of their practices were considered with an orientation toward providing systems to support the family patient-physician covenant. As a foundation for developing its plan for lifelong learning, the task force explored domains of management mastery, including the management of knowledge and information, the management of relationships, the management of care processes, and cultural proficiency.

MAJOR FINDINGS This report presents a number of proposed innovations that have the potential to assure that family physicians deliver the core attributes of family medicine throughout their careers, including linking the family physician’s personal and professional development in a developmental context, based on ongoing self-assessment through the career stages of a family physician, and the creation of continuous personal and professional development modules as a new foundation for continuing medical education and professional development. The process for the continual improvement of clinical practice in family medicine must begin with a close working relationship between the academic community and the practice community. This relationship should be iterative over time, with research creating new practice innovations, which in turn create new questions for the research enterprise.

CONCLUSION While traditional continuing medical education (CME) has served to meet many of the original tasks for which it was designed, the current model does not meet many of the emerging needs of patients, physicians, or health delivery systems. For this reason, traditional CME should be replaced with a process that incorporates personal, professional, and practice development. In order to build a more dynamic and effective way to support lifelong learning and performance change, this new process must address the needs that accompany the personal and professional developmental challenges encountered throughout the course of a family physician’s professional lifetime.