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P⁴ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice Residency Demonstration Initiative?

Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice (P⁴) is a 14-site, national comparative case study of a spectrum of innovations associated with the Patient Centered Medical Home in family medicine residency training.  P⁴ was inspired and initially funded by the Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors and the American Board of Family Medicine.  It is overseen and governed by a multi-generational and cross-disciplinary Steering Committee that is co-chaired by Drs. Sam Jones and  Larry A. Green.  The central task of P⁴ is evaluation. Oregon Health and Science University houses the evaluation core for the Initiative, which is lead by Drs. Patricia Carney and Patrice Eiff. 

What are the key innovations being examined by the P⁴ sites?

P⁴ represents the first serious reconsideration of the structure, length and content of family medicine residencies since primary care residencies were defined in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The P⁴ sites represent educational experiments initiated by the programs themselves; they are testing their best ideas about what is needed to change the content, structure, and length of family medicine residency education.  The pole star for these innovations is the Patient Centered Medical Home that is emerging now.

Are there specific questions that we might expect to be answered by P4?

• P⁴ is likely to inform the following questions, among others:
• How can residency experience better align with new models of practice?
• How residents can learn to work effectively in teams to provide patient-centered care?
• How residents can learn to fully use technology to measure and improve healthcare quality and outcomes?
• What types of training experiences are effective in producing skilled personal physicians who provide patient-centered care?
• What teaching methods are effective?
• What educational outcome measures are meaningful?
• How do we measure and ensure competency?
• What is the cost and how do we finance new residency experiences?
• How can we train the next generation of family medicine physicians to adapt to whatever healthcare system changes emerge?
• What does it take to accomplish substantial change in a family medicine residency in current realities?
  

What is the Goal of P⁴?

P⁴ expects to use the results of these practical experiments to inform the primary care disciplines of what is needed and possible, and particularly identify needed adjustments to accreditation requirements. 

How and when will information and findings be shared?

Learnings from the P⁴ Initiative will be communicated and shared in peer reviewed publications and national and regional meetings of stakeholders as they become readily available.  Several P⁴ manuscripts describing the foundational concepts and learnings have been published in several journals including Academic Medicine, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, and Family Medicine.