WONCA Working Party: Education

Dr Victor Ng (Canada)

Email Chair

Currently, Dr. Ng serves the corporate associate medical director/deputy chief, emergency medicine, at the newly merged Scarborough Health Network in Toronto, Canada.  His academic interests are primarily in medical education with teaching responsibilities at the undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing professional development level.  He is a faculty member in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and Western University.  Dr. Ng is highly involved with teaching in the Family Medicine/Emergency Medicine fellowship program as well as teaching medical students and family medicine residents.  

At the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), he currently serves in a senior leadership role as the Associate Director, Programs and Practice Support.  In the past, he has served as the Associate Director, Family Physicians with Special Interests or Focused Practices and as a member of the National Board of Directors.  He has sat on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Canadian Family Physician Journal and was a member of the National Committee on Continuing Professional Development at the College of Family Physicians of Canada.  

At the World Organization for Family Doctors (WONCA), Dr. Ng was the founding chair (2016-2021) of the special interest group on emergency medicine.  He was a member of the executive committee of the Working Party on Education and Working Party on Rural Practice Council.  He also serves as the CFPC senior staff advisor for WONCA Polaris, the North American Region's Young Doctor Movement.  Dr. Ng currently is a member of the editorial board of the Education for Primary Care and British Journal of General Practice Open.  He is well published in peer reviewed journals in the areas of medical education and has presented internationally on the topic. 

The WONCA Working Party on Education will support high quality education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine for medical students, doctors in training, and established general practitioners and family doctors.

Terms of reference:

The WONCA Working Party on Education will:

1. Support quality education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine.
2. Support the setting and maintaining for standards for education, training, assessment and continuing professional development in general practice / family medicine both nationally and internationally.
3. Develop education, training, assessment and continuing professional development policy for WONCA.
4. Provide links to education, training, assessment and continuing professional development resources and people for the member organisations of WONCA.
5. Support high quality education at WONCA conferences by acting as a resource, if invited, for Host Organising Committees of WONCA World and Regional conferences.
6. Act as a resource on education, training, assessment and continuing professional development for the WONCA Executive, World Council and Regional Councils.

“To have a positive effect on the functioning of health systems and ultimately on health outcomes of patients and populations, educational institutions have to be designed to generate an optimum instructional process.”
The Lancet Commission: Health Professionals for the 21st Century.

2016-2018 priorities

download detailed priorities document
Priorities for the group are to:

Raise the status of FM in the undergraduate (UG) curriculum: Lobbying through WONCA to influence the UG curriculum to support the Singapore and Rio statements. We aim to:
(i) improve the status of the discipline
(ii) attract the brightest and best into FM
(iii) foster high Academic status for FM

Programme accreditation: Continue to build on the published WONCA standards for PG and CPD education building a resource for WONCA to support programme accreditation. Work to promote PG training CPD for FM particularly for underserved areas.

Sharing resources: Develop processes for sharing education resources both within the Working Party and across the WONCA networks and for producing guideline documents applicable across the continuum of education.

Education for Primary Care
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WONCA CPD Standards 2016
WONCA Global Standards for PG FM- Guide for Program Development 2016
WONCA Global Standards for Postgraduate FM Education 2013
Checklist for Medical Student Experiences in FM 2012
Details on the process for development of Checklist for Medical Student Experiences can be found here

Two important key statements underpin the WPE strategy looking forward from 2016

The Rio statement 2016

The World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA) calls for all countries to increase the number of family doctors in order to achieve high quality comprehensive primary care and universal health coverage.
Effective strategies include: improving the skills of doctors already working in the community; recognising Family Medicine as a specialty and enhancing the academic basis of the discipline; strengthening the family medicine experience of all medical students; actively recruiting more medical graduates into more postgraduate family medicine training programs; giving all family doctors and members of their teams the resources to carry out their work, recognising their contribution, and ensuring their retention in the workforce – all in order to deliver excellent integrated cost-effective people-centred care.

WONCA Singapore statement 2007

Every medical school in the world should have an academic department of family medicine, or an equivalent academic focus.
Every medical student in the world should experience family practice as early as possible and as often as possible in their training.