“Faculty can’t teach what they don’t know,’’ said Dr. George E. Thibault, president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation at the American Board of Family Medicine’s Primary Care Policy Forum on February 26.
The forum, moderated by HRSA’s Frederick Chen, focused on how to best prepare faculty to train health professionals for practice in a changing healthcare system—a system faculty may not have experienced when they were working.
In his presentation, Dr. Thibault highlighted two Macy-funded initiatives to introduce faculty to new and emerging approaches in faculty development:
- •The American Boards of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics are designing a curriculum to help faculty in these three disciplines develop the requisite skills to teach students the competencies they need to work in patient-centered medical homes.
- •The joint University of Missouri and the University of Washington interprofessional faculty development training program will help faculty develop skills and experience in facilitating interprofessional education and collaborative practice. (The program is currently being piloted at six academic health centers.)
“These initiatives are examples that other academic institutions can implement to help prepare their faculty for teaching 21st century healthcare,” said Dr. Thibault.
As health care reform continues, new education models will need to be developed to address those changes, and faculty will need to be trained on them. “Every delivery reform must have an educational component to it,’’ said Dr. Thibault.
Dr. Barbara Brandt, Director of the new National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, and Dr. Larry Green, Professor, Epperson Zorn Chair for Innovation in Family Medicine and Primary Care at the University of Colorado also participated in the panel discussion.