Team Primary Care: Training for Transformation

As of February 2023, the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Healthcare & Education (CACHE) became a key partner on a federal grant that aims to accelerate transformative change in the way primary care practitioners train to work together.

CACHE supports the initiative by enabling and embedding collaborative competencies and collaborative leadership into Team Primary Care, adapting and implementing existing and effective toolkits with primary care teams, and offering and evaluating customized professional development programs, coaching, and resources. Continue reading to learn more about the grant, CACHE's role, and the project team assembled to take part.

To explore some of the toolkits and resources related to the TPC initiative, please visit our page.

Team Primary Care (TPC) logo

About the Project

What is Team Primary Care?

Team Primary Care: Training for Transformation (as the initiative is called) is an interprofessional initiative of the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine funded by Employment and Social Development Canada. This initiative is co-led by the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Canadian Health Workforce Network, in partnership with over 65 health professional and educational organizations across Canada. The overarching aim of this project is to promote, enhance, and transform curricula, education, and team-based models for primary care professionals. Ultimately, Team Primary Care will help support training for primary care practitioners to contribute to the provision of more comprehensive, team-based primary care.

Addressing the challenges

Close to five million Canadians do not have a regular primary care provider. Additionally, nearly one in six family doctors in Canada are nearing retirement, potentially resulting in millions of Canadians losing their access to primary care. As a result, many Canadians seek care in overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, walk-in clinics or virtual care apps that — while all critical within our health system — do not enable continuity of care throughout every stage of a patient’s life. Many Indigenous communities and Canadians living in rural areas are also disconnected from essential services that are not culturally sensitive nor safe and must travel hundreds of kilometers to access care.

As governments expand efforts to address a growing crisis in access to primary care, team-based primary care approaches are likely to emerge as a dominant model of organizing primary care. Although there are pockets of team-based comprehensive primary care teams operating successfully across the country, many primary care professionals have not been trained to work in these models. This project will address these challenges by training individual primary care practitioners, building up existing primary care teams and initiating new ones to hit the ground running as collaborative team-based models of care are scaled up across Canada in the coming years.

Stella Ng, Director and Scientist

Stella began her term as Director of CACHE in 2021. She spent the previous eight years with the UofT's Centre for Faculty Development at St. Michael's Hospital where she served as Director of Research. She is also an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Speech-Language Pathology and Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, and a Wilson Centre Scientist.

Stella is passionate about the transformative potential of education, particularly critical reflection and critical pedagogies to foster collaborative, compassionate, and ethical health care and health science. This passion was sparked by challenges experienced as a pediatric audiologist in the public-school system, which motivated her to complete her PhD on how people learn and practice in the face of value-conflict and uncertainty.

Lynne Sinclair, Senior Consultant, Partnerships & Innovation

Lynne is a Physiotherapist and the Senior Consultant, Partnerships & Innovation at CACHE. She also holds an Assistant Professor appointment with the Department of Physical Therapy, Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Lynne was one of the founding leaders that helped create the Centre for IPE in 2009 and one of the original faculty developers of the ehpic™(Educating Health Professionals in Interprofessional Care) program in 2005.

Lynne has wide expertise and publications in quality improvement, patient safety, intersectoral communication, and team-based practice. She is widely invited as a keynote speaker for educational events and in 2018, Lynne joined the Board of Directors of the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative (CIHC).

Tavis Apramian, MD, PhD, IPE Scholar, Evaluation

Tavis is clinician-investigator in medical education, medical humanities, and palliative care. He completed an MA (English) at Carleton, an MSc (Narrative Medicine) at Columbia, an MD/PhD (Health Professional Education) at Western, Family Medicine residency at McMaster, and a fellowship in Palliative Care at the University of Toronto.

He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine (DFCM) and a Scientist in the DFCM’s Office of Education Scholarship. His research program focuses on primary care education, workplace-based education, and end-of-life care.

Sarah Gregor, PT, PhD, IPE Scholar, Tools

Sarah Gregor is a clinician, teacher, and researcher. She received both her Master of Science in Physical Therapy, and doctorate degree in Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Toronto. She currently works clinically in the private neurological physiotherapy practice and teaches within the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at McMaster University.

Sarah’s previous research has explored ways to improve walking for individuals living with stroke, focusing on the relationship between walking and rhythm abilities. She has now shifted her research to focus on improving interprofessional collaboration in Canada.

Cheryl Ku, MSc, Research Coordinator

Joining the CACHE team in December 2022 as a Research Coordinator, Cheryl brings over 10 years of experience from various roles with the Wilson Centre, Temerty Faulty of Medicine and University Health Network. Her current role at the Wilson Centre is an Education Coordinator. She is also the administrative lead for the Health Professions Education Research PhD program at the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation.

She holds a Master of Science degree in Health Policy, Management & Evaluation with a concentration in Health Services Research from the University of Toronto.

Denise Ponte, B.Sc., Administrative Coordinator

Denise Ponte joined the CACHE team in September 2022 in advance of CACHE’s project within the Team Primary Care grant. She holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from York University, majoring in Kinesiology and Health Science.

Prior to joining CACHE, Denise worked for 10 years in the non-profit sector, securing funding and coordinating grant projects for parks and recreation organizations.

Photo of Lily Winnebota wearing a white blazer and black dress.

Lily Winnebota, M.A., Project Manager

Lily joined the CACHE team as a Project Manager in December 2022. Prior to this role, she has worked in fundraising and grant management for over 5 years. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Criminology and a Masters degree in Socio-Legal Studies, both from the University of Toronto.

Lily is passionate about creating spaces for equal treatment and opportunity and aims to embed EDIA practices in all of her work.

Lindsay Herzog, MD, Lecturer

Lindsay Herzog is a family physician at Mount Sinai Hospital and lecturer within the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Lindsay is the Associate Faculty Lead for Portfolio in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine MD Program, and the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Accountability Lead at the Mount Sinai Academic Family Health Team. Her research focuses on critical and transformative approaches in medical education, seeking to equip trainees with the capacity and motivation to provide care that is equitable and person-centered.

Our Partners

Additionally, CACHE’s partners on the initiative include the Canadian Mental Health Association, VHA Home Healthcare, The Institute for Education Research at UHN, The Wilson Centre, and the Office of Education Scholarship, Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of Toronto. Members of each of these organizations will also participate in Team Primary Care: Training for Transformation, working closely with CACHE. To learn more about the broader CACHE team, click here.