About Team Primary Care
Team Primary Care - Training for Transformation is a unique and timely initiative that aims to accelerate transformative change in the way primary care practitioners train to work together. To do so, it brings together an extensive network of partners to enhance the capacity of interprofessional comprehensive primary care (CPC) through improved training for practitioners, supports for teams, and tools for planners and employers.
Team Primary Care aims to prepare primary care providers to work in teams, in tandem with the health system reforms needed to adopt the delivery of more and better CPC. Ultimately, by better preparing new and existing primary care practitioners, Canadians will have better access to equitable primary care close to home.
TPC’s Vision:
An integrated health system in which every individual receives equitable, high quality, comprehensive care from a well-trained, well-supported and optimally utilized primary care team.
TPC’s Mission:
Our mission is to transform primary care training and education, equipping Canada’s workforce for effective team-based care.
In support of the four primary care core functions:
(first) Contact
Comprehensiveness
Coordination
Continuity
Primary care education in Canada should result in teams committed to these five principles:
Interprofessionalism
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Accessibility
Truth and Reconciliation
Psychological Health & Safety
Social Accountability
Team Primary Care is an interprofessional initiative of the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine funded by Employment and Social Development Canada. It is co-led by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Canadian Health Workforce Network, in partnership with over 100 health professional and educational organizations across Canada.
Team Primary Care Leadership
Project Secretariat
Co-Lead, Team Primary Care
Director of Education, College of Family Physicians of Canada
Dr. Ivy Oandasan
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Ivy Oandasan is a Full Professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and an active family physician who has been involved in teaching and research since 1997. She led a national research team that conducted the environmental scan and literature review on the evidence for interprofessional education for collaborative patient centred practice that was funded and ultimately used by Health Canada in 2004. Now, as the Director of Education at the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), she leads the program evaluation and supports the implementation of proposed changes for family medicine education.
Co-Lead, Team Primary Care
Lead, Canadian Health Workforce Network
Dr. Ivy Lynn Bourgeault
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Ivy Lynn Bourgeault, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa and the University Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions. She leads the Canadian Health Workforce Network and the Empowering Women Leaders in Health initiative. Dr. Bourgeault has garnered an international reputation for her research on the health workforce, particularly from a gender lens. She has been a consultant to various provincial Ministries of Health in Canada, to Health Canada, the pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the OECD and to the World Health Organization. She was inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in September 2016 and received the 2016/17 University of Ottawa Award for Excellence in Research.
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Jasbir Sunner
Project Manager, Team Primary Care
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Dale McMurchy
Project Manager, Team Primary Care
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Lissa Manganaro
Project Coordinator, Team Primary Care
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Lorelei Nardi
Project Coordinator, ACES Committee, Team Primary Care
Team Primary Care Purpose & Intended Outcomes
At its core, Team Primary Care aims to further improve access to care by supporting the training of team-based comprehensive primary care among health care practitioners.
Aligned with the growing focus on interprofessional care across Canada, the vision is that training will support primary care teams to optimize the use of all providers.
Additional capacity and expanded team-based care will enable more Canadians — including Indigenous Peoples and those living in rural settings — to have access to comprehensive primary care.
Team Primary Care's Approach
Designing and implementing interprofessional training for health care practitioners and teams of practitioners is a critical part of the initiative. Three key deliverables and pillars of work will guide Team Primary Care and its partners:
Team Primary Care will enhance, align and transform current practitioner- specific training for the delivery of comprehensive primary care.
Team Primary Care will create, augment and adapt interprofessional training approaches across health professions including support for the full participation of Indigenous and internationally educated practitioners, maximizing their integration.
Team Primary Care will enable more comprehensive partnerships through seed funding of projects that aim to enhance or create primary care teams, maximizing and integrating the scopes of practice among the team’s practitioners to improve access to care.
Ultimately, Team Primary Care will help support training for primary care practitioners to contribute to the provision of more accessible and comprehensive primary care. It will support current and future health care teams to optimally maximize every practitioner’s scope of practice, creating more system efficiencies with a primary health care workforce that feels valued and is resilient.
About The Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine
The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) has played an important role in family medicine in Canada since it began in 1954. To better serve the future of family medicine, the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine (FAFM; formerly known as the Research and Education Foundation) was established in 1994. Contributions to the FAFM continue to fund numerous awards, grants, and scholarships, as well as initiatives to support the training and continuing professional development of medical students, family medicine residents, and family physicians.
About The College of Family Physicians of Canada
The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) is the professional organization that represents more than 42,000 members across the country. The College establishes the standards for and accredits postgraduate family medicine training in Canada's 17 medical schools. It reviews and certifies continuing professional development programs and materials that enable family physicians to meet certification and licensing requirements. The CFPC provides high-quality services, supports family medicine teaching and research, and advocates on behalf of the specialty of family medicine, family physicians, and the patients they serve.
About The Canadian Health Workforce Network
The Canadian Health Workforce Network is a knowledge exchange network of researchers, decision-makers, and other knowledge users with expertise in health workforce planning, policy and management. Its internationally recognized, interdisciplinary and intersectoral health workforce research expertise provides an excellent foundation to lead large, multi-stakeholder projects to address complex health workforce challenges, while building capacity in both official languages.