New Curriculum Will Help Faculty Lead Change

The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) and the Association of Departments of Family Medicine (ADFM) are leading an initiative to develop and disseminate a curriculum on leading change in academic family medicine. The initiative emerged from discussions by the Council of Academic Family Medicine. “There is a critical need for training on how to lead change in the current health care environment,” said Gretchen Dickson, MD, MBA. “This new curriculum will educate and empower family medicine faculty at all levels of their careers.”

Dr Dickson is chair of a task force that is creating the new curriculum to train faculty at medical schools and residency programs to plan for change, initiate change, and sustain change.

The content will cover concepts such as organizations as systems, creating a vision, assessing readiness for change, understanding power and politics, creating a team to guide change, creating a strategic plan, the role of finances in change, establishing buy-in, facilitating effective teamwork, selecting and implementing quality improvement tools, and anchoring change in the organizational culture.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do to pull this together,” said Dr Dickson, “but with all the transition that’s taking place in health care payment and delivery, it’s important that family medicine faculty are in a position to proactively lead change, rather than letting change lead them.”

A recent survey of ADFM members revealed that family medicine department chairs are being asked to help academic centers steer through the changing health care landscape. Some chairs are being asked to accept new titles and leadership positions, often on top of their chairmanships.¹

During focus groups, STFM members pointed out the importance of leadership programs for family medicine educators. In a 2011 member needs assessment survey, STFM members rated faculty development as their number one need from a list of STFM priorities. They rated the importance of STFM leadership programs at 3.77 out of a possible score of 5.0.

“This curriculum directly addresses needs expressed by our membership,” said Dr Dickson.

The Leading Change Curriculum will be delivered in 2 tiers:

• Asynchronous online content. This will be available in a web format similar to Teaching Physician.org. Each identified topic area will have a 1-pagegeneral overview, plus a self-directed learning module and links to recommended resources, including worksheets and other tools. Each module will be no longer than 15 minutes. The taskforce will produce a total of 12 modules.

• Live presentations. This will include pre-conference workshops, lectures/discussions at conferences, STFM On the Road presentations, and/or live webinars. The task force identified 6 topics for live presentations. The live presentations may be linked to the learning modules. For example, participants may be required to complete modules before or after the live events.

Components of the new curriculum will be made available for integration into existing leadership programs, such as emerging leaders, medical student educators development institute, new department chairs’ orientation, and individual institutions’ leadership development programs.

The curriculum will be complete and ready for dissemination by October 31, 2013.

The Leading Change Task Force members include: Gretchen Dickson, MD, MBA; Mary Dankoski, PhD; Robert Freelove, MD; Ana-Elena Jensen, PhD; M. Kim Marvel, PhD; Mindi McKenna, PhD, MBA; Catherine Florio Pipas, MD, MPH; Gurjeet Shokar, MD; Mike Sitorius, MD; Mary Theobald, MBA. The ADFM Liaison is Ardis Davis, MSW.

The project received a $25,000 grant from the STFM Foundation. It is endorsed by the Council of Academic Family Medicine.