Executive Director’s Report

by Stacy H. Brungardt, CAE

Focused Effort and Listening to You = Success

As I look back at the previous year, there is much good news to share. I am extremely pleased to report that the Society ended 2009 more than $22,000 in the black. It’s important that we pause to celebrate the numerous STFM successes this past year: Our membership numbers increased slightly (when lots of other associations struggled to retain members). We held three successful conferences and a successful regional workshop. The STFM Resource Library (FMDRL) has improved. Our Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum is now an important resource that can be used in our family medicine community. Our Foundation income surpassed budgeted fund-raising projections by 11%. fmCASES will launch in 2010. We identified a new journal editor to take Family Medicine to new heights. Our Council on Academic Family Medicine initiatives have increasing significance, and our advocacy efforts are making a difference. We have much to celebrate.

Part of the reason we achieved our success this past year is through more focused efforts on activities that matter to our members. Your Board and Strategic Planning Committee have devoted a great deal of face time identifying the key areas where we should be directing our time and resources. They’ve also given thought to how we’ll measure our progress.

Using member surveys, dozens of flipchart sheets, and much debate, the STFM leadership has identified the following indicators of success for the Society, determined they were interdependent and not in priority order, and agreed to focus the Society’s efforts on these for the next 2 years.

Outcomes/Indicators of Success
• STFM is seen as the go-to resource and authority for family medicine education across the curriculum, thereby attracting and necessitating membership by all family medicine educators.

• Relationships developed through STFM are essential to the members’ professional well-being, vitality, and growth.

• STFM leads the improvement of the quality of patient care in teaching sites through innovation and scholarship.

• STFM is financially independent, has ample resources to meet its goals, and teaches its members how to help their local organizations become financially independent.

Each of these priorities has tactics and measures that are underway. Rather than being an academic exercise, these priorities have served as a guide to prioritize new activities we’re working on in 2010. For example, the “go-to resource” priority is pretty broad in nature; however, after looking at current STFM offerings, the Board honed in on a particular target for the next 2 years—residency faculty. The Board made a decision to specifically address the needs of our residency faculty, a group that makes up about 40% of STFM members. We took the information from residency faculty in our member needs survey to identify needs and concerns STFM could address. Here’s what you said you need: faculty development that doesn’t require travel, assistance with training IMGs, relief from Residency Review guidelines, and more top-notch students selecting family medicine as a career. Of course, you also said you need more time—more time for scholarship, more time for teaching residents, more time for research. We’re not sure how to give you more time, but we’re thinking about it!

Several new initiatives for 2010 are targeted specifically to residency faculty, and some directly to community-based residency faculty, including:
 
• Online modules to orient international medical graduates to residency training. Modules will include the US health care system, expectations of US patients, communications with patients and families, operations of a family medicine residency program, and succeeding in a US family medicine residency program. These are scheduled to go live by the end of March 2010.

• Members of the Education Committee are developing faculty development modules to provide community-based residency faculty, who have been in their jobs less than 5 years, basic training on precepting, feedback, and problem learners. This online training is scheduled to be launched in early 2011.

• STFM on the Road—These are half-day workshops we bring to your faculty. You told us you have more restricted travel dollars, so we’re bringing the training to you! Several topic offerings are particularly relevant to residency faculty. Contact the STFM office for more information on these offerings.

• STFM participated, along with the other CAFM organizations, in providing feedback to the Review Committee-Family Medicine (RC) on what needed to change in the RC requirements to create a better training environment and make your lives less complicated. STFM will take the lead, with assistance from the other CAFM organizations, on developing a team to respond to the RC guidelines once they are available for comment in September 2010. We also recognize that once these recommendations come out, our residencies are going to need some help complying with the new requirements. The Society will be developing strategies, with others, to address these needs.

Here are other initiatives, mostly in collaboration with other groups or organizations, which were begun or completed this past year.

Dissemination of the Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum—Through much hard work, good critical thinking, and input from many, our task force achieved what we’ve been told couldn’t be done. The Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum is available on the STFM Web site at http://www.stfm.org/initiatives/fmcurriculum.cfm. The clerkship was funded by the STFM Foundation and blessed by CAFM and the AAFP. Kudos to Task Force Chair Heidi Chumley, MD, Scott Fields, MD, MHA, and their team for staying focused and developing this important document for the discipline.

CDC Immunization Grant—With the collaboration of the Group on Immunization leaders and STFM staff, STFM received a CDC grant to enhance the personal digital assistant, mobile Web, and on-line versions of the popular and free Shots program and will develop applications for smart phones, such as the iPhone.

Clerkship Medical Home Initiative—Academic Medicine has published the findings of the STFM-funded observational study of the development of medical home teaching clinical experiences for family medicine clerkship students. The goal of the project was to learn the degree to which third-year medical students are exposed to the components of the Patient-centered Medical Home during their family medicine clerkship and whether this exposure correlates to student satisfaction or career choice. This study was conducted under the supervision of the STFM Research Committee by investigators at Oregon Health and Science University.

Virtual Patient Cases—fmCASES: STFM continues to partner with iIntime, a nonprofit institute out of the Dartmouth Medical School, to develop a computer-assisted learning curriculum in family medicine, consisting of virtual patient cases. fmCASES is designed to teach the family medicine core clerkship curriculum in a manner that permits the program to be completed by an average medical student during an average clerkship in family medicine. Pilot testing and peer review of the 29 virtual patient cases is complete, and the cases will be available for subscription in July 2010. To learn more about fmCASES, go to www.med-u.org/virtual_patient_cases/fmcases/.

As we celebrate our successes this past year, I’ll give a special thanks to the STFM staff. They are a group of hard-working individuals who feel a connection to STFM’s purpose and the members we serve. I thank them for their service and desire to provide high-quality work in a member-focused way.

Thank you to all the members who answered our surveys, who allowed our staff to visit your offices this past year, and who provided the insight to guide these efforts.

I also want to thank Scott Fields and Terry Steyer for this past year. Both are committed, talented, and generous individuals, and I will be forever grateful that I got to work so closely with them during their presidencies.

I said it last year and I’ll say it again. On behalf of the STFM staff, I want you to know that we think we work for the best members imaginable. It is an honor to serve you and the values you represent.