Society of Teachers of Family Medicine

November 2011 STFM Board Meeting

ACTION ITEM AGENDA

Advertising and Partnership Policies: Approved the following two recommendations from the Communications Committee for a 1-year trial:

  • All new requests for advertising that do not fall under the label of STFM endorsed programs or employment opportunities will be reviewed by the Finance Committee and the Communications Committee chair.
  • All partnership requests from organizations that were not partners prior to 2011 should be reviewed by the Finance Committee and the Communications Committee chair.

This action resulted from the STFM Executive Committee’s discussion of recent concerns about the American Board of Physician Specialties flyers that were mailed with the September issue of Family Medicine. The issue has numerous nuances, and while the committee appreciated the concerns of a number of members, several Board members found that the response from Mark Loafman, MD, MPH, assistant professor family medicine from Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, and chair of the Board of Certification in Family Medicine Obstetrics from the ABPS, justified our sharing the flyers with members. The issue was not fully resolved, and a smaller subset of the STFM Board is going to continue the dialogue and determine if future partnerships with certifying groups other than ABFM is appropriate for STFM.

Approved 2012 STFM Budget: Approved the STFM 2012 budget as presented to the Board with total projected income at $3,183,876 and projected expenses at $3,183,868.

Advocacy Decision Tree: Approved an Advocacy Decision Tree to help make decisions on which issues STFM will develop statements for and which it will not.

Advocacy Policy Manual: Approved numerous changes to the Advocacy Policy manual, which will be posted to the STFM Web site once approved by the other Academic Family Medicine Advocacy Committee associations (American Academy of Family Physicians, Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, Association of Departments of Family Medicine, North American Primary Care Research Group, STFM).

Approval of Policy on Investments: Approved a revised STFM investment policy document.STFM has been working since July with our investment manager to make STFM investment policies reflect the current environment.

DISCUSSION AGENDA

Strategic Plan: Discussed and revised elements of the 2012-2014 STFM Strategic Plan to make itmore concise and realistic to accomplish in the next 3 years. View the Strategic Plan

Third Quarter Financial Statement: Reviewed the third quarter statement. STFM continues to enjoy being in solid financial position. Strong performance from membership,advertising income, conferences, and special projects has contributed to our performance this year.

Communications Audit: Discussed the findings of an STFM communications audit led by STFM communications staff in response to comments on needed improvements in communications from the member needs survey. As a result of the audit findings, a series of actions will betaken to make our communications more consistent overall and more effective,including an updated Web site and improvements to the Messenger and Resource Library. The Board discussed and approved a specific recommendation to create a new logo and tagline for STFM to better reflect STFM’s efforts to be an innovative and progressive organization. The Board noted that it will be important for the Society to engage the membership early in the process of creating the new logo and for us to explain the reasoning behind the change. Be watching your e-mails and the Messenger over the next few months for opportunities to provide input on the design.

Program Assessment Special Committee Update: Reviewed activities of a newly created special committee charged with creating a process for evaluating current STFM initiatives and as well as initiating these reviews. Over the next few months, the committee will continue to gather data to evaluate STFM programs. Part of the culture change the special committee will recommend is the development of an evaluation cycle for programs/initiatives when they are being develop so this evaluation becomes part of the continuous quality improvement of initiatives.

Strategic Plan Measures Task Force: Reviewed the first draft of a matrix that begins to define goals, objectives, and measures for each STFM program and initiative. The Board agreed that it’s important to work with individuals who created the programs and also have an external group evaluate the process for consistency with other initiatives’ measures. As a first step toward this collaborative process, by the end of November, initiative leaders will be asked to send to staff any objectives and measures they have created for their initiatives. The task force will review these and will also suggest goals and measures for those initiatives where these are missing.

Updates from the Program Committee: Strong submissions and intentional programming to fill any important content gaps are anticipated to result in an exciting 2012 Annual Spring Conference. Activities of note for the 2012 annual meeting are:

  • Plenary invitations are out but not all confirmed.
  • The candidates’ lunch will be replaced with short presentations that highlight innovation.
  • There will be a community project in Seattle, and we will ask attendees to provide new underwear and socks for the project.
  • We will share with the entire membership a videotape of the incoming president’s speech rather than have him give a presentation to a small audience at the conference.
  • Local students will be invited to attend sessions the last day to increase their exposure to academic family medicine.


Preceptor Resources Site Update: Reviewed information on the new preceptor resources Web site, to be called “Teaching Physician”that will go live in January 2012. Mary Theobald from staff is looking for members to contribute content to the site. This resource will need to look for opportunities to link with the work and resources of the Resident Competency Measurement Task Force and the Resident Faculty Development Training Modules.

Annals of Family Medicine: Discussed current issues and activities related to the Annals of Family Medicine. The journal continues to be an important resource for the discipline and perceived as a high quality publishing venue.

HRSA Tri-Board Meeting: Discussed a HRSA project that will support a meeting of representatives from family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics to discuss a faculty development effort across the disciplines. The outcome of this January 2012 meeting will be to develop a plan for what this effort should look like. Members from our Resident Competency Measurement Task Force have been invited to participate.

Length of Residency Training Pilot: Discussed the American Board of Family Medicine collaboration with the ACGME RC-FM on a length of residency training pilot. STFM leadership and Council of Academic Family Medicine representatives will encourage pilot organizers to create a well-designed research pilot that looks at models beyond the 4-year concept, eg, a 2-year model and a model that integrates residency training in the 4th year of medical school.

CFPC Collaboration: President-elect Jerry Kruse, MD, shared several learnings from his participation in the College of Family Physicians of Canada Board of Directors meeting in Montreal. He and Stacy Brungardt, CAE, also attended their preconference session with their Section of Teachers and their Board dinner. Mike Donoff, MD, from the University of Alberta, has been an integral part of the Resident Competency Measurement Task Force, sharing his expertise and experiences from the local and national level on competency measurement. Ivy Oandasan, CFPC Consulting Director for Academic Family Medicine, presented multiple sessions at our 2011 annual meeting on competency education and interprofessional education. STFM will continue to look for opportunities to create linkages with our Canadian colleagues and share these opportunities with our membership.

PAEA White Paper: Immediate Past President Perry Dickinson, MD, reported on progress of the small team from STFM and the Physician Assistant Education Association that is developing a white paper about educational issues related to physician assistants and family medicine educators working together on interprofessional education.

Non-physician Label: The Board gave the Membership Committee the charge of identifying a better membership label for “non-physician”.For years we have struggled with identifying a better way to identify our members who are not physicians. Our President Jeri Hepworth, PhD, suggested “other health professionals” for the committee to consider. What do you think? Let Sally Weaver and the Membership Committee hear your ideas.