Member Perspectives From a Community of Practice for Health Professional Educators

Background and Objectives: Health professional educators (HPEs) play an increasingly important role in family medicine education yet commonly experience barriers to program integration and access to faculty support. A decade ago, the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto established a formal HPE program to better support this group of educators across its large, multisite training program. This support included the creation of an HPE community of practice (CoP) to facilitate collaboration, networking and information exchange.Methods: This study describes the current and desired state of the HPE CoP from the perspective of its membership. We used a mixed-methods approach involving both a survey and focus groups. Survey results underwent descriptive analysis while focus groups were evaluated using inductive thematic analysis.Results: The survey had a 19.7% response rate with seven professions represented. Respondents were experienced educators involved in diverse academic activities; however, few had formalized academic job descriptions or protected time to teach. Major barriers included clinical workload and inappropriately targeted faculty development. Nine HPEs subsequently participated in one of two focus groups. They validated survey findings and identified themes of limited integration, structural barriers to academic participation, and the CoP’s importance for HPE connection and advocacy.Conclusions: HPEs make significant contributions to family medicine education and continue to face various structural barriers to effective integration. Intentional, faculty-focused support strategies are therefore needed to optimize HPEs’ role as core educators in family medicine training programs.