Our Board has indicated that we must ensure that the curriculum for family practice residents will offer opportunities for every trainee to develop appropriate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in each of the core areas of family practice. We will also promote and facilitate the research essential to determining how changes in family practice are affecting both our patients and the health care system. Feedback from family doctors across Canada tells us that an overwhelming majority still love being family physicians and place great value on the special relationships that family doctors have with their patients. It also informs us that there is growing interest and support for new strategies and models of practice. Approaches like the FPN's could offer Canadians a clearer understanding of the role of their family doctors and could provide family physicians themselves with a strengthened definition of who they are and renewed pride in what they do.
Family doctors remain among Canada's most valuable assets.
But if family practice is to maintain and enhance its role at the forefront of the Canadian health care system, every citizen of this country needs to understand what family doctors do. The time is right for us to renew for all the definition of family practice in Canada.