Articles

What is the right balance between INNOVATION and STANDARDIZATION?

February 19, 2026

1969 Program Requirements

Current Outcomes of Family Medicine Residency—Milestones

Other Readings

  1. Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice (P4)
    • Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice
    • Redesigning Residency Training
  2. Length of Training Pilot
    • A Comparison of Residency
      Applications and Match Performance
      in 3-Year vs 4-Year Family
      Medicine Training Programs
  3. The Clinic is the Curriculum—I3 Papers
    • Improving Chronic Illness Learnings from I3 Collaborative
    • Lessons from the I3 PCMH Collaborative
    • The I3 POP Collaborative
    • Triple Aim is Triply Tough
  4. Clinic FIRST
    • The Road to Excellence in Primary Care Teaching Clinics
    • Actions to Transform Ambulatory Residency Training
  5. AFMRD RPI Initiative
    • AFMRD Innovation Projects

The first residency requirements for family medicine were elegant and short—four pages long!—and underscored the need for innovation. The current requirements are much longer and more prescriptive. Over the past 15 years, there have been a number of major regional and national trials of innovation in residency education—I3, P4, the Colorado PCMH project, RFI, Length of Training, Clinic First and FM-NICCE. Now, in 2020, how much innovation do we need?

At the same time, there is evidence from family medicine milestones that significant numbers of our residents are graduating without getting to the level of proficiency in their competency across milestones. How do we ensure that every graduating resident has the necessary knowledge and skills to function as a fully competent family physician while also encouraging innovation in residency education?

More Posts

View All Posts