Team Primary Care: Training for Transformation in Canada
Authors: Bourgeault Ivy , Oandasan Ivy , McMurchy Dale , Sunnar Jasbir 
Published: January 2024

To address the growing crisis in primary care access and sustainability in Canada, Team Primary Care brings together 65+ health professional organizations to enhance the capacity of interprofessional, comprehensive primary care through improved training for practitioners, supports for teams and tools for planners and employers.

Team Primary Care targets the primary care workforce including family physicians, primary care nurse practitioners, family practice nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, mental health practitioners, traditional Indigenous Healers, and others. The project focuses on those involved in the training of the primary care workforce, including funders, accreditors, learning organizations, health professional associations and government.

Team Primary Care endeavours to enhance interprofessional comprehensive primary care training; improve labour market integration for Indigenous and internationally educated practitioners, maximizing their utilization; create enabling environments for diverse, healthy, and resilient team members to practice at their optimal scope and capacity; and demonstrate, spread and scale leading integrated primary care workforce planning practices, tools, and resources.

To date, Team Primary Care has launched eight primary care practitioner specific curricular development projects in parallel with workplace integrated learning demonstration projects, offered team-based training for primary care teams using cross cutting tools and supports to enhance interprofessional, equitable and inclusive, culturally safe care aimed at improving access to care and provider well-being. By March 2023 we anticipate an additional 12 curricular projects and 20+ demonstration projects will be ready for implementation.  Unique to this project is its integrative approach and intentional change strategy that has been embedded in its design. In addition, an extensive process, outcome, and meta evaluation will have been carried out throughout the length of the project. Between now and March 2023, the aim is for the project to enhance primary care capacity enabling more Canadians to have access to an integrated primary care workforce that is inclusive of a broader range of practitioners working in teams that embed the principles of interprofessionalism, equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, psychological health and safety, reconciliation, and social accountability through enhanced and aligned training.

The integrative and inclusive approach taken by Team Primary Care provides a unique country-wide case study of how to rapidly use education as a vehicle to quickly catalyze practice reform in primary care.  Shifting the mental model towards team-based care inclusive of a broad range of primacy care practitioners committed to the delivery of comprehensive primary care was a major focus of the communication plan used. The cross-cutting tools developed are transferable to teams included but not limited to primary care and for both the Canadian context and beyond.

The development of a sustainable interprofessional primary care training table is envisioned with a repository of team training tools and resources for use by a prepared primary care workforce prepared to scale and spread team-based care across the healthcare system. This case study will offer learned lessons on how education can be a critical enabler for primary care system reform.