Identifying Public Health Competencies Relevant to Family Medicine

Abstract

Public health situations faced by family physicians and other primary care practitioners, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and more recently H1N1, have resulted in an increased interest to identify the public health competencies relevant to family medicine. At present there is no agreed-on set of public health competencies delineating the knowledge and skills that family physicians should possess to effectively face diverse public health challenges.Using a multi-staged, iterative process that included a detailed literature review, the authors developed a set of public health competencies relevant to primary care, identifying competencies relevant across four levels, from "post-MD" to "enhanced." Feedback from family medicine and public health educator-practitioners regarding the set of proposed "essential" competencies indicated the need for a more limited, feasible set of "priority" areas to be highlighted during residency training. This focused set of public health competencies has begun to guide relevant components of the University of Toronto's Family Medicine Residency Program curriculum, including academic half-days; clinical experiences, especially identifying "teachable moments" during patient encounters; resident academic projects; and elective public health agency placements. These competencies will also be used to guide the development of a family medicine-public health primer and faculty development sessions to support family medicine faculty facilitating residents to achieve these competencies. Once more fully implemented, an evaluation will be initiated to determine the degree to which these public health competencies are being achieved by family medicine graduates, especially whether they attained the knowledge, skills, and confıdence necessary to effectively face diverse public health situations-from common to emergent. (Am J Prev Med 2011;41(4S3):S251-S255)

Evaluation and mechanism for outcomes exploration of providing public health care in contract service in Rural China: a multiple-case study with complex adaptive systems design

“…The contract service in rural areas can be seen as a counterpart to family medicine which has become a pervasive measure to deliver public health services in countries all over the world [24][25][26][27][28]. After signing the contract with families, the village doctors act as family doctors and need to provide health protection and medical care to the family members individually, although most of them are not qualified general practitioners due to they received their education below college level [21].…”

Public Health Competencies for Chiropractic Programs

“…From these 13 articles, 217 competencies were identified from a variety of health care fields, including allied health, dentistry, undergraduate medicine, public health professionals, family medicine, primary care, nursing, physical activity, and medical schools in the United Kingdom (American Association of Public Health Dentistry, 2014; Anderson et al, 2002; Basu & Roberts, 2012; Caron & Tutko, 2009; Chappel et al, 2007; Clark et al, 2016; Dallman et al, 2009; Fish et al, 2011; Gillam et al, 2015; Harvey et al, 2011; Hoover et al, 2012; Keller et al, 2011; Potts et al, 2011). Of note, one publication described a model public health course and related learning objectives for chiropractic educational programs, published in 2002 (Anderson et al, 2002).…”

Integrating clinical medicine and population health: where to from here?

“…This is in line with Abraham Flexner's 1910 report that called for medical training to prepare physicians to fulfill their societal obligations to prevent disease and promote health. Indeed, numerous other subsequent publications have considered how best to incorporate the social determinants of health into training and practice (Andermann and CLEAR Collaboration 2016;DeVoe et al 2016;Hughes and Likumahuwa-Ackman 2017;Harvey et al 2011). In fact, CPM seems to reiterate guidance from the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), which explicitly states in their BFour Principles of Family Medicine^that family physicians are a resource to a defined practice population, not just individual patients (The College of Family Physicians of Canada n.d.).…”