Family Medicine Professional Profile
The Family Medicine Professional Profile is a position statement that defines the discipline of family medicine, describes the scope of practice and training for family physicians, and highlights the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC)'s distinctive approach and philosophy of care.
Rationale for a professional profile
The CFPC developed a professional profile for family medicine to aid in the development of educational standards, to articulate family physician commitments and contributions, and to communicate effectively to stakeholders.
- Standard setting: To guide the development of educational standards with a clear description of the work of family physicians in keeping with a competency-based medical education (CBME) paradigm.
- Social accountability: To describe the collective commitment of family physicians to the people of Canada. To articulate the contribution of generalists and generalism in family medicine, introducing the concept of community-adaptiveness.
- Communication: To inform patients, partner organizations and policy-makers about the role of family physicians and to guide the CFPC’s messages to medical students about family medicine as a career.
Profile development
The profile was developed using a consensus building approach with extensive consultation. The College prepared an initial draft statement building on previous work from the CFPC’s Triple C Competency-based Curriculum development. After reviewing the prototype with CFPC committees, surveying the membership and consulting with key internal and external stakeholders, the College revised the prototype to create the Family Medicine Professional Profile.
