Family Medicine Curriculum Resource Project: the future

Under contract to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) created an undergraduate medical education curricular resource designed to train physicians to practice in the 21st century. An interdisciplinary group of more than 35 educators worked for 4 years to create the Family Medicine Curriculum Resource (FMCR). By consensus, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies were adopted as the theoretical framework for this project. The FMCR provides materials for the preclerkship years, the third-year family medicine clerkship, the postclerkship year, and faculty development, as well as guidance for integrating topics of special interest to the federal government (such as, geriatrics, Healthy People 2010, genetics, informatics) into a 4-year continuum of medical education. There are challenges inherent in implementing each component of the FMCR. For example, can the ACGME competency-based approach be adapted to undergraduate medical education? Can the densely packed preclerkship years be adapted to include more focused effort on developing these competencies, and whose job is it anyway? What is "core" to being a competent clinician, and what information can be obtained when needed from medical informatics sources? Will family medicine educators embrace the FMCR recommendations for their third-year clerkships? Will exit assessment of the competency levels of graduating medical students be achieved, and can it make them more capable residents? Can faculty in different clinical and educational settings integrate the teaching of "how to learn" into their repertoire? How will faculty development innovation progress in a time of increasing emphasis on clinical productivity? Developing a common language and adoption of core competencies for all levels of medical education is imperative in a society that is focusing on improving health care quality and outcomes. The FMCR Project has developed a curricular resource to assist medical educators in this task. The challenge for the future is to measure how the FMCR is used and to ascertain if it has an influence on better patient and system outcomes.