Workshop 03

Background: The WWPE is developing guidelines on principles and standards for Family Medicine (FM) in undergraduate (UG) education. We need a well-balanced workforce for future health care delivery. There is strong evidence that exposure to primary care and positive FM role models increases choice of FM as a career. Yet traditionally teaching is secondary care focused offering little experience of FM or of learning contextually in the communities where clinical care is increasingly delivered. FM is seen as low status against hospital specialties.

Aim to:

• Share personal challenges for developing FM orientated UG curricula in the EMR region.
• Identify curriculum principles to promote learning compatible with future health care
• Reflect on potential curriculum change for their own local context
• Shared barriers to change and ways to overcome these

Method: This workshop will share good practice across EMR contexts and formulate principles for curriculum design and delivery appropriate to the region. After a brief introduction, participants will work in small groups initially to discuss the challenges of introducing medical students to FM. An interactive presentation will set these in the context of published international literature. In small groups, participants will discuss personal examples of innovative practice, identify important changes to embed FM in the curriculum needs and consolidate views on how WONCA can support them to overcome these.

Conclusion: This workshop is key to understanding and developing principles and standards for FM in medical schools across all WONCA regions. It is very important that the EMR needs are represented in this work to ensure we embrace the challenges and barriers to be overcome by this initiative.