Continuing Professional Development in Mental Health and Addiction Medicine
Our division aims to increase the capacity of family physicians across all U of T faculty sites and across the province to provide safe, equitable, and easy to access to care in the areas of mental health and addictions. To accomplish this aim, we engage in partnerships within the department and across the province to develop high quality continuing professional development resources. Please see some of the resources listed below:
Practising Well Community of Practice
The Department of Family and Community Medicine's (DFCM) Division of Mental Health and Addiction partnered with the Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP) to launch the Practising Well Community of Practice, a continuing professional development initiative within the division.
The Community of Practice (CoP) was built by family physicians for family physicians and is made up of monthly virtual sessions promoting real-time connection and collaboration in areas including mental health, substance use disorders, and chronic pain. These are challenging conditions, and treating them is a demanding and complex process. As such, the sessions also focus physician well-being.
Mentoring, Education, and Clinical Tools for Addiction: Partners in Health Integration (META:PHI) is a provincial initiative to support physicians and other health care providers who work with people who use substances. The organization creates clinical tools, guidelines, and practice resources that are available to clinicians to support their work in this area.
The Working with Families Institute is a collection of modules created specifically for small-group learning to help physicians deal with common medical and psychosocial issues that have an impact on families. Modules do not require an expert facilitator as groups work through the scenarios together.
Counselling and Psychotherapy in Family Medicine: A Five-Week Learning Program (Sept. 2025–May 2026)
This Mainpro+ accredited interactive program runs every two years and enrolment for the next instalment will be open in April 2025. This program occurs virtually over five weekends that run from September until May and provides an intensive introductory curriculum on current approaches and techniques to help physicians increase their knowledge and clinical skills in office counselling and psychotherapy.
