Teaching Tomorrow’s Leaders Today

The Association of Family Practice Residency Directors (AFPRD) is a proud sponsor of the Annals of Family Medicine. The AFPRD’s mission is to promote excellence in family practice graduate education in order to meet the health care needs of America. The Annals of Family Medicine is a much needed and welcomed publication that will provide the research and evidence we need to fulfill our mission.

As this year’s AFPRD President, I have chosen the theme, Teaching Tomorrow’s Leaders, Today. Our residency programs have the important responsibility of creating the learning environment from which the future leaders of family medicine will emerge. Ideally, in this environment residents would learn because they want to, not because they are forced to, and the whole organization is designed to facilitate the learning process. In this environment, learning should be a team effort, including the faculty and staff as well as the residents. In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge calls this kind of environment a learning organization. Senge defines a learning organization as “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.” He goes on to say that while survival is necessary, it is not sufficient for a learning organization. He sees learning as an inherently creative process, making the hallmark of a learning organization one “that enhances our capacity to create.”¹

One of the most creative expressions of learning is research. However, engaging residents in research is among the toughest challenges we face as directors. It is becoming increasingly important that we meet this challenge, because doing research is one of the best ways to teach the new Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competency of practice-based learning and improvement. The ACGME defines this competency as follows: “Residents must be able to investigate and evaluate their patient care practices, appraise and assimilate scientific evidence, and improve their patient care practices.”² The Annals of Family Medicine was created to publish research that facilitates practice-based learning and is the best journal to help teach this competency.

To stimulate residency programs to develop their research curriculum and ultimately contribute to the Annals, we hope to highlight residencies that have developed successful research programs in future issues of the Annals. In this way, we can all learn from each other in our quest to develop and become learning organizations.

Robin O. Winter, MD, MMM, CPE
President
Association of Family Practice Residency Directors

• © 2003 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.