Development of a provincial medical affairs community of practice

Abstract

The term “medical affairs” describes functions undertaken by health care organizations in Canada in support of their relations with credentialed staff, such as physicians, dentists, midwives, and certain extended-class nurses. These credentialed staff are generally appointed by the board of directors of their organizations and operate under their own bylaws, rules, and regulations. Despite the importance of medical affairs, in Ontario, little has been done to connect these functions across health care organizations, even though there are significant potential benefits from doing so. In this paper, we describe the development of a provincial community of practice (CoP) for medical affairs. We briefly review fundamental concepts relating to CoPs, consider their relevance to health care and medical affairs in particular, and discuss the use of technology to support CoP development. The intention is to share our learning with others, so that they might consider establishing their own CoP, as well as to offer some practical advice on the implementation of virtual CoPs.