A Guide to Practice Management Prep Facilitation
Why should family medicine residents learn about practice management?
Most new family doctors report that they do not feel prepared in the area of practice management when they transition from residency to independent practice.
I felt incredibly ill-prepared and struggled A LOT with the administrative side of medical practice when I left residency. The medicine was the easy part of practice.
I felt totally unprepared to start up a practice. How do you get an EMR? How do you get space? Equipment? Staff? These are all absolutely basic things that would need to happen to get a practice up and running, but at no time during my training were they even brought up, let alone discussed in detail.
I felt really unprepared for the business side of medicine and spend way more time than I ever imagined on this aspect, thus taking away from free time or patient time.
*Responses from the CFPC’s 2019 First Five Years in Family Practice Needs Assessment Survey
Practice management skills are essential to successfully and sustainably practising family medicine, protecting the mental heath of family doctors, and delivering effective patient care.
What is Practice Management Prep (PM Prep)?
PM Prep is an online, self-guided approach to learning about practice management. It was created for residents by a CFPC working group composed of learners, teachers, early-career family doctors, program directors, and representatives of partner organizations.
Step 1: Complete Self-Reflection
The resident completes an online self-reflection questionnaire with six questions about their knowledge of six areas of practice management.
Step 2: Create a Learning Plan
Based on their reflection results, the resident creates a learning plan. They select one or more topics and paired resources to review in the coming months.
Step 3: Meet With Coach (Optional)
To enhance their reflection, the resident meets with their preceptor, PM coach, or peer group to review the results of their reflection and discuss their selected topic area, learning plan, and resources.
Step 4: Review Resources
Over the next several months, the resident reviews their selected resources to complete their learning plan before completing the next PM Prep reflection. Residents may report their activities for Mainpro+® credits.
Your role as a practice management coach
Coaches are not expected to be experts in practice management.
Your role is to:
- Help deepen the resident’s self-reflection on their own practice management knowledge and preparedness
- Support residents in developing learning plans to address their ongoing learning needs
- Stimulate resident awareness of the importance of practice management skills using pre-defined topics that are helpful to consider at specific intervals during training
- Direct learners to the CFPC’s hub of practice management resources, which are designed for use by family medicine residents as they transition into their first five years of practice
Alignment with CanMEDS-FM
PM Prep was designed to align with residency program accreditation and continuing professional development expectations that are informed by the competencies described in the Leader Role of the Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists–Family Medicine (CanMEDS-FM) framework and the CFPC’s Core Professional Activities Training Profiles.
This tool and its accompanying online resources enable users to identify gaps and, through the use of learning plans, engage from the start of residency onward in the process of lifelong learning that the CFPC supports and requires.
Samples and resources
Questions? Contact [email protected].
Acknowledgements
PM Prep was developed by the CFPC’s Practice Management Working Group:
- Stephen Hawrylyshyn – Co-chair and First Five Years in Family Practice Committee representative
- Ivy Oandasan – Co-chair and Director of Education, CFPC
- Cristina Castronovo – CFPC Section of Residents representative
- Ming-Ka Chan – Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Leader Role Working Group
- Evan Chong – Resident Doctors of Canada representative
- Carol Costa – Director of Marketing and Membership Services, CFPC
- Janice Harvey – Physician Advisor, Professional Development and Practice Support, CFPC
- Courtney Kaminski – Membership Coordinator, CFPC
- Jenny Kaser – Canadian Medical Association/Joule
- Sarah Kinzie – Family Medicine Program Director, McMaster University
- Shirley Lee – Physician Advisor, Canadian Medical Protective Association
- Darren Martin – First Five Years in Family Practice physician
- John Maxted – Family physician
- Ainslie Mihalchuck – Past-President, Manitoba College of Family Physicians