Physician leadership has never been a more important skill for the family physician than it is today. Thoughtful and capable family physician leaders can provide stability in uncertain times for their office teams, among their health system colleagues, and within their community. This physician leadership enhances the quality of care that teams can provide to their patients, improves the morale of the care team, and helps communities stay focused on health-enhancing activities.

Leading Physician Well-Being (LPW), developed by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), is a unique certificate program designed to help you develop the leadership skills you need to spearhead that change among the physicians and other clinicians in your practice or healthcare organization.

All AAFP active members are eligible for LPW. Residents are eligible if they have the support of their residency program and should submit a letter of support from their program director. Starting in 2024, non-members are also eligible for the program.
LPW is a 10-month series that grows family physicians’ knowledge and skills in three foundational areas:

1. Physician well-being ― build expertise through education about the current state and importance of well-being, how to measure it, and best practices to achieve it, and develop a plan to raise awareness of its importance in your practice and organization.
   
   
2. Leadership development ― learn how to lead through wielding influence, implement change management and performance improvement (PI) activities, and communicate with medical colleagues and others, and develop a change management plan to guide your organization’s work to improve physician well-being.
   
   
3. Performance improvement ― gain hands-on experience by developing and implementing a PI continuing medical education project in your practice or organization that’s expected to wrap up one year after the program’s educational experience concludes. This activity meets the American Board of Family Medicine’s Performance Improvement Activities requirements.

This learning experience opportunity is made up of a mix of live-streamed and in-person events along with regular online learning activities―all of which combine to foster development of a supportive learning community.

More information including a list of program benefits, a schedule of activities, and the application can be found on the AAFP website.

The application deadline has been extended to Monday, June 10.