Projects

In collaboration with over 100 partners, over 20 practitioner-specific and over 20 team training projects are in progress to enhance, align and increase preparedness to practice in a collaborative approach to care delivery. Supporting each of these partners are cross-cutting teams and an Indigenous Advisory Circle.

Practitioner Specific Primary Care Training Projects

Pharmacists

Pharmacist Training for Comprehensive Primary Care (PT4CPC)

This project aims to Increase the number of advanced primary care-based pharmacy leaders as clinicians and educators with the knowledge, skills and capacity to provide collaborative, comprehensive care to patients as part of the patient’s medical home.
- Lead: Canadian Faculties of Pharmacy
- Canadian Pharmacists Association
- Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists

Physician Assistants

Physician Assistant Primary Care Work Integration

The purpose of this project is to develop, implement, and evaluate an education program consisting of self-paced e-modules and work- integrated learning that lead to Physician Assistant micro-credentialling to support comprehensive primary care delivery in vulnerable, underserved, or marginalized populations.
Canadian Association of Physician Assistants (CAPA)

Family Physicians

The College of Family Physicians of Canada Outcomes of Training Project

The College of Family Physicians (CFPC) supports the Team Primary Care (TPC) vision. We have a commitment to improve the health of all people in Canada by setting standards for education, certifying and supporting family physicians, championing advocacy and research, and honouring the patient-physician relationship as being core to our profession. Access to high-quality comprehensive continuous primary care close to home is a foundational component of an effective health care system.
Family practices play a crucial role in providing such care in Canada. This includes access to a family doctor and a team who knows them and can provide compassionate, coordinated, and personalized care. Leading the Family Medicine Stream, we are working with multiple partners including the 17 departments of family medicine, to co-create a renewed residency curriculum that aims to prepare family physicians who are able, willing, and enabled to provide comprehensive care anywhere in Canada.
The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Nurses

Development of the Primary Care Nursing Role

The overall goal of the project is to develop a strong Patient’s Medical Home (PMH) workforce, with a particular focus on the training and credentialing of post-licensure primary care nurses.
This initiative is led by a tripartite team composed of Memorial University, Université de Sherbrooke, and the Canadian Family Practice Nurses Association (CFPNA). The project also includes 20+ network partners, organizations, and collaborators representing various disciplines, provinces, institutions and areas of expertise.

Traditional Healers

Traditional Healing and Wellness

A priority for the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council’s (IPHCC) is to support Indigenous people, communities, and partners in the work of reclaiming safe spaces for Traditional Healing within primary health care settings in Ontario. IPHCC is diligently advocating for sustainable and equitable resources for Traditional Healing and Wellness programs in the province that promote physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional wellbeing among First Nation, Inuit, and Métis people, utilizing a two-eyed seeing approach to care delivery.
The deliverables of the project will focus on the development of an accreditation model for Traditional Healing that will hold culture at the heart of the work, as well as the development of mentorship model that will ensure there is capacity building for the next generations of Traditional Healers and Cultural Service Providers.
Indigenous Primary Health Care Council (IPHCC)

Medical Laboratory Technologists

Virtual Educational Toolkits to Support Medical Laboratory Technologists

To support interprofessional education (IPE) for medical laboratory technologists/technicians (MLTs) to develop the skills necessary to participate in interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) within a Patients’ Medical Home (PMH) model of care.
- Lead: Brenda Gamble, Associate Dean and Associate Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario Tech University
- Dr. Edward Osborne, Primary Care Physician, Bowmanville Ontario
- Christine Nielsen, Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science
- Grant Johnson, Lakeridge Health Laboratories
- Dr. Tim Willet, Simulation Canada

Chiropractors

Enhancing comprehensive primary care by integrating musculoskeletal care on interprofessional teams

The research project is divided into three elements: inter-disciplinary education, competency enrichment, and integration or enhancement of MSK services within primary care teams. We hope that a positive outcome from this project will help to support further consideration of chiropractic integration within publicly funded primary health care teams by establishing a model which can be scaled up to other settings. We hope that it will ultimately lead to changing the way Canadians receive musculoskeletal care.
Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College

Respiratory Therapists

Establishing a Post-Licensure Curriculum to Enhance Respiratory Therapists ’ Roles

This project will result in a curriculum framework which will serve as a guide for interprofessional continuing professional development and will also be an important tool to inform stakeholders of the roles respiratory therapists play on interprofessional primary care teams.
Canadian Society of Respiratory Therapists

Dietitians

Interprofessional Dietitian Education for Team-Based Primary Health Care

The aim of the project is to develop, implement and evaluate an innovative interprofessional educational toolkit featuring asynchronous virtual simulation - based learning modules for pre - and post - licensure dietitians to strengthen key practice competencies for team - based primary health care settings in Canada.
University of Ottawa
Dietitians of Canada
Canadian Alliance of Nurse Educators Using Simulation

Social Workers

Creating a National Vision and Building Capacity for the Role of Social Work in Primary Care

Social work has a philosophy and expertise that aligns with the aims of primary care. Social workers in primary care contribute to patient care by providing psychosocial assessment and intervention; offering psychotherapy and other counseling; doing case management; navigating complex health care systems; linking patients with community resources and other parts of the health care system; and educating and training other providers about the psychosocial aspects related to health and illness. There are variations, however, in the roles and the extent to which social workers have been integrated in primary care teams across Canada. Further, it is essential to clarify social workers’ roles in primary care in order to help address some of the challenges primary care teams are facing since the COVID-19 pandemic, including the high demands for mental health care, increasingly complex patients, new uptake of virtual care, provider burnout, and human resource recruitment and retention. To provide clarity to social workers on their roles, and to optimize their scopes of practice in patient care, it is important to establish a national vision and to further build the capacity of social workers in primary care.
Project Lead:
Dr. Rachelle Ashcroft, University of Toronto
Project Team:
Fred Phelp, Canadian Association of Social Workers
Dr. Keith Adamson, University of Toronto
Glenda Webber, Canadian Association of Social Workers
Louis-Francois Dallaire, Centre Intégré Universitaire en Santé et de Services Sociaux de la Capitale-Nationale
Dr. Deepy Sur, Ontario Association of Social Workers
Bryn Hamilton, Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario
Dr. Jennifer Rayner, Alliance for Healthier Communities

Project Overview

Occupational Therapists

New Competencies for Occupational Therapists in Canada

The primary goal of the project is to develop a suite of online modules and resources to enhance the capacity of occupational therapy learners and practitioners to practice in collaborative primary care teams. Our profession has new Competencies for Occupational Therapists in Canada and our priority is to ensure the competency related to Culture, Equity and Justice is strongly embedded in each module to: promote equity, promote anti - oppressive behaviour and culturally, safer inclusive relationships, and con tribute to equitable access to occupational therapy in collaborative primary care teams. A secondary goal is to develop a core set of online modules and other resources to support all members of the interprofessional team to work in collaborative primary c are teams. Our priority is to ensure the modules are grounded in the foundational values and principles of collaborative primary care.
Queen’s University

Speech Pathology / Audiology

Enhancing the delivery of effective comprehensive interprofessional primary health care (CIPHC)

The audiology and speech-language pathology (SLP) partners aim to create curriculum designed to educate and train professionals to work in Comprehensive Interprofessional Primary Healthcare (CIPHC). Ultimately, the curriculum is intended to benefit persons from across the lifespan who are living with communication disorders by facilitating collaborations between communication disorders experts and other CIPHC team members.
Speech-Language & Audiology Canada (SAC)
Western University, Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Communication Sciences & Disorders
National Centre for Audiology

Nurse Practitioners

Certificate Program for Nurse Practitioners Delivering Primary Care in the LTC Setting

LTC residents are increasingly unstable, unpredictable and in need of complex care due to high levels of frailty requiring an integrated interprofessional approach to care. LTC is a speciality practice area and requires additional education and training.
This project will develop a certificate program for nurse practitioners and NP students delivering primary care in the LTC setting. The purpose is to develop a curriculum that will enhance role clarity, build clinical capacity, improve LTC resident outcomes and satisfaction while contributing to NP optimization, integration and retention.
Toronto Metropolitan University

Physiotherapists

Developing essential competencies and an online curriculum for Physiotherapists

We will develop a set of essential competencies for physiotherapists working in interprofessional primary care teams. We will then develop asynchronous online modules for physiotherapists working or planning to work in interprofessional primary care settings.
Queen’s University

Paramedicine

Paramedicine as Part of Interprofessional Primary Care Teams

This project is intended to support the integration of paramedicine (systems and clinicians) into interprofessional primary care teams and models of care, with specific attention to how providers navigate the complexity of collaboration when health care team members are not co-located.
• Paramedicine Collaborative at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto
• Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto
• Wilson Centre for Health Professions Education Research, University Health Network
• York Region Paramedic Services Health for All Family Health Team, Oak Valley Health
• Eastern York Region North Durham Ontario Health Team
• Western York Region Ontario Health Team Southlake Community Ontario Health Team
• Paramedic Association of Canada Paramedic Chiefs of Canada
• Paramedic Organization of Regulators in Canada

Team Optimization Projects

Integrating Diversity

Healthcare Connections:
Connecting Diversity

Healthcare Connections: Connecting Diversity will engage more than 280 newcomer internationally educated healthcare professionals and at least 36 employers with services that increase the capacity of the primary health sector to integrate Internationally Educated Health Care Professional (IEHP) talent.
ACCES Employment

Integrating IEHPs

HMC Healthcare Connect

This program will support Internationally Trained Health Care Professionals (ITHPs) through career counselling, soft skill development, micro-credentialing and job placement.
The ITHPs will understand their career pathway options and have the opportunity to gain a series of micro-credentials along with soft skills training and labour market information that will help them make decisions and move them forward in the health care field. This project is about practical on the job experience and along with the soft skills and job readiness workshops will make the ITHPs immediately useful in small primary care offices.
HMC Connections

Integrating IEHPs in Rural Practice

National Advanced Skills and Training Program for Rural Practice

The goal of this project is to increase opportunities for access to advanced training and skill enhancement for rural physicians, including international medical graduates and those in first year of practice.
Society of Rural Physicians of Canada

Integrating Midwives

Pilot Integration of Midwives into a Comprehensive Primary Care Setting

This project will integrate registered midwives as a pilot intervention to strengthen comprehensive primary care to youth clients aged 12-24 at the Victoria Youth Clinic Society (VYCS) and address the workforce mental health challenges experienced by midwives by promoting an alternate model of practice.
Victoria Youth Clinic Society and the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria (CISUR at UVic).

Integrating IEHPs

Scaling up the Integration of IMGs and Internationally Educated Health Professionals in Clinical Assistant Roles

This project scales up a skills training program through the Alternative Career Options for Healthcare professionals project to bridge internationally trained and educated healthcare professionals (IEHPs) to employment as clinical assistants.
This primary care clinical assistant training course is designed on evidenced-based medicine by using standardized patient’s cases. Through the training, IEHPs enhance their skills to identify, analyze, and interpret common and critical clinical presentations to provide the prompt care effectively and efficiently, in a Canadian context. This course is an integrative training course which focuses on patient’s interaction, gathering patient’s history, physical examination, laboratory requisition to achieve the proper working diagnosis and/or differential diagnosis. All training incorporates Intercultural Competencies.
The Clinical Assistant Training Project is designed to train IEHPs to be clinical assistants through three (3) main components:
- Theoretical component: This component will be taught and discussed during the classes including the systems of the body and their diseases
- Practical component: Through examining Standardized patients and hands on training
- Examination component: Through 3 practical exams, ensuring that IEHPs are aligned with Canadian healthcare standards, aware of the Canadian guidelines and policies in medical facilities
WILL Employment Solutions in collaboration with Balsam Integrative Naturopathic Clinic as part of the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine (FAFM) collaboration via the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Integrating Peer and Community Health workers

Primary Healthcare Expansion at The Alexandra Community Health Centre

This project will integrate two additional members to our existing primary healthcare team, enabling us to enhance individual and team-based competencies and capacity through improved role clarity, new professional development opportunities and overall team efficiency.
The Alexandra Community Health Centre (The Alex)

Integrating First Nations Communities

A Culturally Responsive Approach in Chronic Disease Management

A Culturally Responsive Approach in Chronic Disease Management will engage and collaborate with four (4) First Nations communities to ensure equitably accessible care, and specifically to ensure the health needs and priorities of the individuals, families and communities are better met by the western health system and its providers, visiting these 4 communities.
Wellness Wheel Medical Outreach Clinic

Integrating Aboriginal Support Workers and Mental Health Clinicians

Chickadee Maternity Collaborative

This project will expand the existing team of professionals at Chickadee Maternity Collaborative by integrating an Aboriginal Support Worker, and Mental Health Clinician into the team to support delivering comprehensive person - centered team - based care throughout pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period to the population of patients we serve.
Chickadee Maternity Collaborative

Integrating Cross Cultural Health Brokers

Umbrella Co-op - Equity in Practice

Equity in Practice: I ntegrating Cross Cultural Health Brokers to implement culturally safer equity - oriented primary care for immigrants and refugees in British Columbia Umbrella Multicultural Health Co - op (UMHC) is a community - led primary care clinic serving diverse immi grant and refugee communities who experience health access barriers in British Columbia. Immigrants and refugees in Canada face language and cul tural barriers to accessing essential services, social isolation, discrimination, un/underemployment, and pover ty - all shaping health outcomes. UMHC confronts these through integration of Cross Cultural Health Brokers (CCHB) - multilingual, multicultural skilled workers who are from the community, and who address the spectrum of barriers that cumulatively impair i mmigrant health, including language/cultural interpretation during visits, complex system navigation, and advocacy with social services. To adeq uately address the intersection of medical complexity and profound social determinants , we need the expertise o f nursing, social work and counseling, which is only possible in our setting if paired with CCHB.
Umbrella Multicultural Health Co-op

Integrating Peer and Community Health workers

The TEMPEH Project: Team care for routine Emergencies among People Experiencing Houselessness

This project will integrate two additional members to our existing primary healthcare team, enabling us to enhance individual and team - based competencies and capacity through improved ro a le clarity, new professional development opportunities and overall te am efficiencies.
Inner City Health Associates

Integrating Peer and Community Health workers

Transforming support for isolated older adults through social prescribing within team-based primary care

This project will enhance our provision of comprehensive team - based primary care by adding new roles focused on improving the health of isolated older adults served by a large interdisciplinary primary care team in Toronto, Ontario. In addition to hir ing a ne w Community Health Worker, we will develop and implement training for existing team members, including family physicians, nurse s, other allied health professionals, and health professions learners, to deepen their understanding and practice of social prescribing. Overall, we hope this project will support a general emphasis on further orienting the health care team toward a deeply community - engaged and community - connected approach to care.
St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team, Toronto

Integrating education science, clinical knowledge, and experiential knowledge

On Track Student-Led Environment (SLE)

The On Track Student Led Environment (SLE) is an innovative educational model that holds promise to transform interprofession al education (IPE) and healthcare practice in primary care. Integrating best practices from education science, clinical knowledge, and experiential knowledge, the SLE model provides learners with valuable, evidence - informed education that enables more compassionate, equitable, and collaborative care.
Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Integrating Health Care Workers

Strengthening interprofessional collaboration for effective health education and promotion initiatives at Toronto Western Family Health Team (TWFHT)

This is a pre - post, mixed - methods, feasibility project to enhance and evaluate collaborative practice in the ongoing health education and promotion activities in a primary care setting.
Lead: Toronto Western Family Health Team

University of Toronto Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE)
Mid - West Toronto Ontario Health Team

Integrating Family Physician Groups

A Quality Improvement Intervention to Improve Interprofessional Collaboration within Primary Care Clinics

The literature underscores how time-consuming and difficult it is to learn to collaborate. Collaboration itself does not necessarily emerge from bringing together professionals from different disciplines. Reasons for the difficulties encountered include the uncertainty and challenges associated with redefining professional roles and scopes of practice, and the learning required to work and coordinate care as a team. Knowledge of roles, communication opportunities, and formalization of administrative procedures that facilitate collaboration are identified as central to good collaborative practice.
Isabelle Gaboury

Integrating Memory Care Providers

Memory Care in Primary Care: An Inter-Agency Memory Care Service within a Community-Based Family Health Team

To develop an inter - agency, team - based Memory Assessment Program designed to assist community - based Family Physicians and Nurse Practitioners in the timely assessment and diagnosis of memory concerns in their patient population . The development of the program will be guided by the Quebec Alzheimer Plan.
The Medical Centre Family Health Organization (FHO): Peterborough, ON
The Alzheimer Society of Peterborough, Kawartha Lakes, Northumberland and Haliburton
The Peterborough Family Health Team (PFHT): Peterborough, ON

Embeding Indigenous ways of knowing and healing practices

Responding to the Call: Centring Indigenous Knowledge Systems to Strengthen Comprehensive Primary Care

1. To embed Indigenous ways of knowing and healing practices into a primary health care teaching clinic through integrating Indigenous Elders/knowledge keepers and the valuable expertise they bring to create new ways of practicing comprehensive primary care.
2. To enhance respectful, inclusive environments that promote cultural safety and humility.
3. To educate our primary health team members, family medicine residents, and other medical learners to better understand the history, culture, and perspectives of the Indigenous community, and to provide culturally appropriate care and treatment.
4. To embrace “structural competency” which embraces anti-racist pedagogy within the domain of interprofessional collaborative practice.
Dr. Mandy Buss
Project Partners:
Manitoba College of Family Physicians
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
University of Manitoba

Integrating Health Care Workers for Orphan Patients

An interdisciplinary team serving orphan patients (EISPO)

EISPO plans to set up an interprofessional team that will meet the comprehensive health needs of orphan patients (patients without a family doctor) that are currently on Saint-Henri’s (a district of Montreal) waiting list. The project’s objective is to demonstrate that a highly functional interprofessional team can increase health care capacity of family physicians while improving their job satisfaction and overall care for their patients. In fact, approximately 20% of patients in Quebec and Canada do not have a family doctor or a primary care team - this proportion rises to 35% in the Montreal region.
Clinique Indigo

Integrating Hospital physicians and Walk-in Clinics

Community Outpatient Services

The purpose of the project is to develop a streamlined process to quickly identify medically complex and vulnerable unattached hospital inpatients and transition these patients to primary care practices, enabling them to receive longitudinal care that reduces hospital readmissions and walk-in-clinic visits. In addition, our project aims to forge stronger partnerships between hospital physicians and walk-in clinics. This collaboration will help enhance the capacity and resources available at the walk-in clinic, ensuring that unattached patients receive comprehensive and timely care, regardless of their healthcare setting.
● Dr. Tiffany Bursey, Family Physician
Project Leads:
● Taunya Cossentine, Innovation Lead, South Okanagan Similkameen Division of Family Practice
● Kelly Hawes, Clinic Support Manager, South Okanagan Similkameen Division of Family Practice

Integrating Maternity Care Providers

First Steps Early Pregnancy Care
Triage Clinic

To create an efficient and effective interdisciplinary team to establish a new first contact, “one-stop-shop” triage clinic for anyone newly pregnant and provide them with timely access and triage of prenatal investigations. The First Steps Early Pregnancy Care Triage Clinic will accept self-referrals, or referrals by primary care providers who do not provide focused maternity care.
● Mighty Oak Midwifery
● Thompson Region Division of Family Practice

Cross-Cutting Team Projects

The Interprofessional Comprehensive
Primary Care Training Collaborative

The Interprofessional Care & the Interprofessional Comprehensive Primary Care Training Collaborative aims to create a prepared workforce for collaborative, interprofessional approaches to Team Primary Care.
- Lead: Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE), University of Toronto at University Health Network
- VHA Home Healthcare
- Canadian Mental Health Association
- Office of Education Scholarship, Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of Toronto
- Reserca
- The Institute for Education Research
- The Wilson Centre
- Equity in Health Systems Lab (EqHS)

Patient’s Medical Home Readiness Assessment

To create a self-assessment survey that would allow family practices to measure to what extent they align with the vision of the collaborative team-based Patient’s Medical Home vision created by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC).
College of Family Physicians of Canada

Integrated Primary Care Workforce Planning

The Integrated Primary Care Workforce Planning project will build capacity for planning by providing support to selected Ontario Health Teams in Toronto to embed planning at a local level, and by developing tools to help stakeholders beyond the Toronto region engage with primary care health workforce planning.
Canadian Health Workforce Network & Ontario Health, Toronto

Reflection, Dialogue, Action & Belonging

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) support, consultation and facilitation across the project and streams; development of an organizational EDIA readiness tool, and testing and refining readiness tool for sustainable use.
College of Family Physicians of Canada

Team Primary Care - Evaluation

The Team Primary Care (TPC) – Evaluation Project aims to capture a roadmap of developments and their significance to the collaborative goal of advancing team-based primary care across Canada.
- Lead: LogicalOutcomes
- University of Toronto
- University of Alberta
- University of Ottawa

Team Psychological Health and Safety Tools

This project will establish a bilingual “self-serve” platform of psychological health and safety tools for teams that will be hosted by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and updated by the Canadian Health Workforce Network (CHWN) team annually, and a bilingual module on psychological health and safety for the Introduction to Health Workforce Studies microprogram at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute.
Canadian Health Workforce Network and the Mental Health Commission of Canada