I’d like to take a few minutes to reflect on one objective from our 2019-2024 strategic plan.
Under the theme of “Strengthen and Build upon Connections and Partnerships in and with Communities,” Objective 3 is to “Grow Community-Based Research and Develop Research-Ready Residents.”
Research by and for family medicine is central to the evolution of family medicine as a distinct discipline. The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) has recognized this, and embedded it in the Family Medicine Professional Profile as a key part of scholarship (together with teaching and quality improvement).
Here at Queen’s DFM, we’ve always valued research, and continue to have all residents at all sites complete a scholarly project. I was impressed by the breadth and quality of work the residents had on display at our recent Primary Care Research Day! The supports research leads and CSPC staff provided to all residents from all sites — as well as access to local data and analytic expertise — really helps to make this happen, so THANKS to all of you!
The CFPC has been definitive in its support for practice-based research and learning networks (PBR/LN) as an essential support for both QI and research in family medicine. Our local network — the Eastern Ontario Network (EON) — is one of many across Canada that work together as a “network of networks” to form the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN). This network had its origins here at Queen’s under the leadership of Dr. Rick Birtwhistle, and now has about 1,400 sentinel physicians and about two million patients in its dataset, and is being used to answer important questions in areas ranging from mental health to chronic disease to antimicrobial stewardship.
I’m spending some time and energy right now working with CPCSSN national co-chairs Dr. Sabrina Wong (Nursing UBC) and Dr. David Barber (Queen’s DFM and lead of EON), to see how CPCSSN can evolve to become a permanent fixture of the health research data infrastructure here in Canada. We’re also partnering with the other PBR/LNs in Ontario to see how we can all work together to support family medicine research and QI across the province, and in particular how they might help support work that is important to the development and evaluation of the new Ontario health teams (OHTs).
We here at Queen’s DFM have a major role to play in this, as we are already the host institution for INSPIRE-PHC, the primary care component of the OHT Central System of Supports that is funded by the MOHLTC to conduct primary care research needed to support planning, implementation, and evaluation of the OHTs.
I was also privileged to have some time to talk to our guest speaker for Primary Care Research Day, Dr. Kelsey Hegarty from the University of Melbourne. Her important work in the field of domestic violence against women and children has had a huge impact internationally on how we approach this important and under-recognized issue in a caring, compassionate, and effective way. It is exactly the kind of “wicked” problem family medicine researchers are best positioned to address effectively, and her work, which includes practice-based randomized trials of interventions, is the sort of groundbreaking research PBR/LNs are designed to facilitate.
Thanks to Dr. Susan Phillips and the entire CSPC team for putting together such a great day!
If you have ideas about how EON or the CSPC can support your ideas for research or QI, please don’t be shy and do be in touch!