CanMEDS Competency

Program Objectives

Medical Expert

Collect, interpret and apply medical knowledge, clinical skills and professional behaviours required to make clinical decisions and effectively provide patient centered-care.

• Perform a complete and accurate patient-centred history appropriate to the patient’s presentation. 
• Perform a complete and accurate physical examination appropriate to the patient’s presentation.
• Formulate an initial plan of appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic procedures relevant to the patient’s presentation. 
• Develop a differential diagnosis and key clinical problem list following assessment of a patient.
• Develop a management plan for key clinical problems following assessment of a patient.
• Apply knowledge of the clinical, socio-behavioural, and fundamental biomedical sciences relevant to a clinical problem.

Communicator 

Demonstrate effective communication skills when interacting with patients, families and other health care professionals involved in the delivery of patient-centered care.

• Develop and maintain appropriate ethical and therapeutic relationships, rapport and trust with patients and their families.
• Collect and synthesize accurate and relevant information, incorporating perspectives from patients and their families, colleagues and other health care professionals.
• Discuss relevant health care information and management plans with patients and their families.
• Develop a shared plan of care with patients, their families, and other health care professionals.
• Demonstrate effective oral and written communication of information associated with a medical encounter.
• Discuss effective strategies for communicating with third parties other than health care.

Collaborator

Demonstrate effective collaboration with health care professionals to provide safe, high-quality, patient-centered care.

• Demonstrate effective collaboration skills within the health care system.
• Demonstrate effective consultation with other health care professionals to provide care for individuals, communities, and populations.
• Demonstrate respect for health care team members without bias (e.g., bias related to gender, ethnicity, cultural background or health care role).
• Demonstrate effective strategies to promote understanding, manage differences and resolve conflicts through negotiation and collaboration.

Health Advocate

Demonstrate the role of the physician in disease prevention and in protecting and promoting, through advocacy, the health of the individual patient, communities, and populations.

• Identify the important determinants of health, risk factors for illness, interaction between the population and their physical, biological and social environment, and personal attributes.
• Identify public policies and trends that affect health locally, nationally, and globally, and barriers to access for populations, including persons with disabilities, the underserved and the marginalized.
• Assess and respond to issues in the Canadian health care system and advocate for patients at all levels. 

Scholar

Demonstrate a lifelong commitment to reflective learning, as well as the dissemination, application and translation of medical knowledge.

• Develop a plan for personal continued education.
• Apply the principles of research, critical appraisal and evidence-based medicine to learning and practice.
• Demonstrate facilitation of learning for health care professionals, patients and society as part of the professional responsibility.

Professional

Demonstrate a commitment to the health and well-being of individual patients and society through ethical practice, high personal standards of behaviour, accountability to the profession and maintenance of personal health.

• Demonstrate accountability to patients by applying best practices and adhering to high ethical standards.
• Demonstrate altruism and accountability to society by recognizing and responding to societal expectations in health care.
• Demonstrate integrity and accountability to the profession by adhering to standards and participating in physician-led regulation.
• Demonstrate a commitment to physician health and well-being to foster optimal patient care

Leader

Demonstrate leadership skills to organize and manage personal and professional practices and to contribute to the delivery of high- quality health care.

• Identify strategies to effectively manage practice and career.
• Apply evidence and management processes to effectively allocate health care resources.
• Describe the roles and responsibilities of physicians and governing bodies in the development and support of the health care system.