Groups & Initiatives

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STFM Initiatives

The leadership and members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine are working on several key projects.

CERA—CAFM Educational Research Alliance

STFM has spearheaded the creation of the CAFM Educational Research Alliance (CERA) as a means to help focus and support medical education research efforts of the discipline.

CERA is intended to

Increase published research and scholarly activity among members of CAFM organizations by providing infrastructure and consultation.
Improve the process for surveying constituents with better questions and fewer surveys
Facilitate scholarship by creating a clearinghouse of data that CAFM members and their residents can access. CAFM members will have access to a variety of data sets collected through CERA for analysis for studies. This provides residencies with a free resource that their residents may access to meet their RC scholarship requirement.

Learn more

Resident Competency Measurement Task Force

STFM is serving as the lead organization on the Resident Competency Measurement Task Force for the Council of Academic Family Medicine. The Task Force is charged with identifying, developing, disseminating, and providing training to residency programs on improved ways of measuring competency in residents in order to satisfy expected new RC-FM requirements.

Advocacy Online Training

Now available, five short courses to teach you the ins and outs of being and advocate for family medicine. Learn More.

Residency Faculty Development

Debuting in 2011, STFM is currently developing online modules that will provide training for community-based residency faculty in three important topic areas: feedback, precepting skills, and problem learners.

Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum

STFM provided leadership for a task force that created the Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum, a document that defines a set of common and important presentations that all medical students should experience during their third-year family medicine clerkships. Principles related to the PCMH are woven throughout the document. This curriculum has been approved by the academic organizations of the family and the AAFP. STFM and other family medicine leaders are working with the National Board of Medical Examiners to use the curriculum as the basis for the shelf exam for third-year students. An STFM taskforce is now developing the “how” to teach the core curriculum.

Phase two of this national curriculum project was to design a online resource that is designed for clerkship directors or faculty who are designing, delivering, and evaluating family medicine clerkships. Educators can see how their colleagues are teaching and assessing specific competencies, explore educational methods, learn about assessment strategies, and find resources.