The American Academy of Family Physician's Approach to Developing and Supporting the Intrinsically Motivated Learner

The American Academy of Family Physicians has 72,600 active members and a robust continuing medical education platform. A foundational principle of their work is an assumption of an intrinsic motivation of physicians to learn in order to better take care of their patients and communities. This commentary presents their vision of individualized learning portfolio in which individual family physicians utilize data to identify their gaps of knowledge and performance over time and use a varirty of CME, including performance improvement, to address and lessen those gaps, with the Academy serving as a navigator and facilitator, all while supporting intrinsic motivation to learn and improve.