Creating Our Path Forward: Department of Family Practice Strategic Planning Process
We are developing a new strategic plan to unite the Department under a shared vision and mission, and to guide our efforts over the next five years.
Learn more about our strategic planning process and how you can get involved below.
Update – March 4, 2026
Seeking Staff and Faculty Input on the Department’s Strategic Plan
Complete the Department of Family Practice Strategic Planning Staff & Faculty Survey by March 31, 2026
Reporting Back
Over the past few months we’ve gathered input from representatives in our Undergrad, Postgrad, Research, and Midwifery programs, as well as our Health, and Sports and Exercise Medicine clinics who provided us with insights on the priorities and challenges shaping their work.
Strategic Planning – Key Themes
Below are the clear and consistent themes that have emerged through these efforts so far. These broad topic areas are beginning to shape our thinking around the strategic plan, and we are looking for broad staff and faculty input to help us build on our understanding of these topics.
Clarity of Purpose
Participants expressed a desire for The Department of Family Practice to have a clearly understood purpose, mandate, and identity that is reflected across all programs, clinics, regions, and sites.
Engagement participants would like to see:
- A shared understanding of who or what is being referred to when speaking about ‘The Department of Family Practice’, including the roles and priorities of centralized leadership and administration.
- A sense of coherence and belonging across the programs and clinics that make up the Department.
- Demonstrated value of the Department, i.e., how does belonging to the Department of Family Practice at UBC drive value and benefit for those working within its programs and clinics?
Connected Relationships
Participants expressed a desire for Department leadership to foster authentic, personal connections with programs, clinics, and distributed sites.
Engagement participants would like to see:
- Improved communications and increased presence of Department leadership within the regions and sites.
- Steps to help foster trust, engagement, and relationship-building through ongoing connection and conversation with staff, faculty, and preceptors across the Department’s programs and clinics.
- Activities that help to ensure people, particularly those working at distributed sites, feel seen, heard, and connected to the larger Department.
Recognition and Retention
Participants expressed a desire for the Department to focus on supporting strong preceptor recruitment and recognition efforts that lead to successful retention of these valuable team members.
Engagement participants would like to see:
- Stronger and ongoing support for the recruitment and retention of preceptors.
- An increased focus on recognition, compensation, time, and space for teaching.
- Greater value attributed to clinical expertise so that faculty and preceptors feel respected, heard, and supported as educators.
Capacity and Growth
Participants expressed a desire for the Department to ensure it is supporting its programs and clinics with the resources required to meet the future needs of learners and communities.
Engagement participants would like to see:
- More support to help meet growing needs for staffing, funding, space, and administrative capacity.
- Assistance and guidance for programs in developing scalability and readiness for growth.
- Guidance to help staff and faculty navigate evolving technology, e.g., artificial intelligence, digital care environments.
Purposeful Impact
Participants expressed a desire for the strengths, impact, and excellence of the Department’s people, programs, and clinics to be recognized, shared, and leveraged to improve care and learning province wide.
Engagement participants would like to see:
- An elevation of the work being done, by recognizing and sharing these contributions across the Department to foster learning, shared celebration, and a common sense of purpose and vision.
- Greater recognition and celebration of the high-quality clinical and academic experiences being delivered by the people behind the Department’s programs and clinics.
There is still time to add your voice to the 2025/2026 Strategic Plan. Complete the Department of Family Practice Strategic Planning Staff & Faculty Survey by March 31, 2026.
Elevate Consulting
Update – February 18, 2026
What has been done
From October to early February, we held conversations with all the programs and clinics that make up the Department of Family Practice, including Undergrad, Postgrad, Midwifery, Research, the UBC Health Clinic and the Sports and Exercise Medicine Clinic, to help inform the mission, vision, and goals of a Department of Family Practice Strategic Plan.
We held both program-specific interviews, and joint workshop sessions that brought together representatives from different programs and clinics. Representatives joined us from across the province and across our distributed sites, including the North, Interior, Vancouver Island, and Metro Vancouver.
An enormous thank you to everyone who participated!
What we heard
Program-specific interviews
Below are the clear and consistent things we heard in program-specific interviews. These themes were common across all programs and clinics and spoke to the desired future state of the Department. Achieving these would help fill the gaps and address challenges being noticed across the Department’s programs and clinics today.
- Clarity of Purpose: The Department has a clearly understood purpose, mandate, and identity across all programs, clinics, regions, and sites.
- Connected Relationships: The Department has authentic, personal connections throughout the programs, clinics and sites.
- Recognition and Retention: The Department supports strong preceptor recruitment and recognition.
- Capacity and Growth: The Department supports the programs and clinics with the resources to meet future needs of learners and communities.
- Purposeful Impact: The Department celebrates the strengths, impact and excellence of its people, programs and clinics.
Joint Program Sessions
In follow-up to the program-specific interviews, we held three Joint Program Working Sessions that bought together representatives from different programs and clinics to share the key themes, connect with each other, and share perspectives on how the Department can begin to respond to these themes. These sessions:
- Validated the key themes noted above while surfacing practical opportunities and examples of learnings across programs.
- Helped shape clear, actionable input to inform next steps and support the Department as it advances its strategic planning work.
Coming up
Stay tuned to The Connector and Strategic Planning webpage for the launch of a full staff and faculty survey, planned for early spring. This survey will be an opportunity for everyone to provide input on the key themes, and tangible actions they would like to see the Department focus on within its strategic plan.
Elevate Consulting
Update – December 17, 2025
What has been done
Through November and early December, we completed five engagement sessions that helped us better understand the work happening across the Department, including:
- A focus group session on November 25th with eight participants from across the province.
- Conversations with representatives from the Undergraduate Program, the Midwifery Program, Research, and the Sport and Exercise Medicine Clinic.
Thank you to everyone who generously contributed to our understanding of the day-to-day work, priorities, external influences, and future aspirations of the different areas that make up our Department.
Coming up
- In early January, we will complete our conversations with program leaders and key members from the Postgraduate Program and UBC Health Clinic.
Bringing program representatives together in early 2026
Everyone who participated in conversations through November, December, and January will be invited to participate in sessions that bring together representatives from all programs and clinics to discuss the common themes we heard, and to provide thoughts or ideas to deepen our understanding of them. Invitations will be sent shortly, and participants will be able choose from three time slots that best suits their schedule.
Stay tuned to here, or subscribe to the Family Practice and Midwifery Connector to stay updated.
Wishing you a happy holidays!
Elevate Consulting
About the Strategic Plan
The 2024 external review highlighted that the Department needs to strengthen how we support our programs. One key recommendation was to create a strategic plan that provides a clear, shared vision all programs can support.
This strategic planning process directly responds to that recommendation.
What will a strategic plan do for us?
A strategic plan is a roadmap: it shows where we’re headed and how we’ll get there together.
The Department’s roadmap will:
- Capture the strength and realities of all our program areas: Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Midwifery, Research, and our Health and Sport and Exercise Medicine Clinics.
- Based on our strengths and realities, set our direction, guide our decision making, and outline how we’ll measure progress.
- Strengthen alignment between our Department and the Faculty of Medicine so our work stays responsive to evolving needs.
- Highlight the actions we’ll take together to achieve our shared vision.
As a Department, we are comprised of many different programs. A strategic plan that unites us under a shared vision must reflect the working realities and aspirations of each program. Your input is crucial to our collective success.
Learn more about how you can get involved.
What does a strategic plan include?
The elements of a strategic plan are designed to work together:
- The vision and mission provide high-level guidance that reflects the aspirations and work of all the programs across the Department.
- Goals and objectives outline the changes or results the Department needs to realize to move towards the vision and mission. These must also reflect the realities of all our programs.
- Focus areas/strategies, and priority activities shape the work the Department will do to achieve our goals and objectives.
About the Engagement Process
Our Department’s greatest strength lies in the people providing medical education — midwives, faculty, physicians, rural and remote practitioners, learners, and partners working together to advance primary health care across B.C. Our network is extensive, diverse, and rich with knowledge, and we want our plan to reflect that diversity, capturing the full range of insights and experiences across the province.
How can you be involved?
Engagement is now underway, beginning with leaders and key members of each program — Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Midwifery, Research, and our Health and Sports and Exercise Medicine Clinics. Early next year we will invite broad engagement from staff and faculty. We encourage everyone to participate to ensure all voices are reflected in the plan.
The goals of the strategic planning engagement process include:
- Connecting with programs by revitalizing relationships with and between program leadership and key members of each program to build a shared understanding of priorities, challenges, and opportunities.
- Gathering practical insights to understand the current priorities for all programs, and to lay the foundation for a new strategic direction, including a mission, vision, and goals that are reflective of all programs within the Department.
- Establishing the roots of long-term collaboration between programs and the Department: strengthening feedback loops, improving communication, and creating connection points that will sustain engagement well beyond this plan.
This is only the beginning of our engagement process. We’ll continue to invite you to participate and share feedback as we move into future phases of our strategic planning work.
Where to Learn More
To contribute to a transparent planning process, we will keep this page updated as we progress through the project. If you have any questions, please contact dfp.comms@ubc.ca.