Improving Leadership in Family Medicine Residents : Development of a Workshop and a Field Note

Context: Although the CanMEDS include a leader role, specific leadership competency training is lacking in family medicine residency in Quebec and Canada.

Objective: To increase the awareness about the leadership competency in family medicine residents.

Study design and Analysis: It is a multi-method study using a questionnaire and qualitative semi-structured interviews.

Setting: GMF-U Charles-LeMoyne, a family medicine training clinic with 35 residents and 25 attending family medicine physicians and teachers.

Population Studied: The residents, the primary care health professionals and the clinician teachers of the clinic.

Intervention: Using the Kern framework for curriculum development, a workshop of two hours intended for residents and clinician teachers was elaborated. It was presented in March 2022 to residents at the GMF-U Charles-LeMoyne. The workshop used methods of participative co-learning and aimed at the appropriation of theoretical concepts relative to clinical leadership through the analysis of examples and situations lived by participants. It was structured around a field note designed for observation of positive leadership actions.

Outcome measures: Right after the workshop, participants evaluated their reaction, learning and anticipated change in behaviour with a questionnaire including open questions and 26 Likert scale questions. A semi-structured group interview two months after the workshop also took place with the residents (PGY1) to evaluate the appreciation and use of the field note.

Results: 9 residents (PGY1), 12 clinician teachers and 1 nurse practitioner attended the workshop. 9 people answered the questionnaire and they all evaluated positively the workshop regarding its content, relevance, structure, animation and participation. All respondents claimed they would use the acquired knowledge in their practice. The residents who participated the semi-directed group interview said the field note was still not used much and suggested we offer the workshop to the psychosocial team so that they can help provide field notes when they participate in direct observation.

Conclusions: This workshop and field note answer a normative need in the family medicine curriculum through the facilitation of “conscious” leadership in the residents’ professional activities. This formation also contributes as an activity for faculty development. This educative activity will be given to other family medicine units who showed interest.