Dear colleagues,

In my former role as President and currently as interim chief executive officer, I have often found myself reflecting on what the Royal College means to you, our members, and how it can evolve to continue to serve your needs, as well as our patients and the broader health care community. I am excited to share with you that we are in the final steps of formalizing our updated strategic plan, which will be presented to Council for final approval in September and then shared broadly with members later in the fall.

This updated strategic plan is framed following extensive member consultations, which have helped us better understand your needs and validate our focus areas. This update incorporates learnings from our October 2022 survey and targeted follow-up in May 2023, as well as consultations with key Royal College committees, health care organizations across jurisdictions, and patient partners.

Focusing on our core work

Our strategic plan is centered around our core roles and how it supports our mandate, which includes

• standards and accreditation,
• assessment,
• learning and
• connecting.

To achieve our vision of advancing learning for specialist physicians and to deliver the best health care for all, we acknowledge the need to define and manage the Royal College’s role – so that we can take concrete actions – in the areas of importance, identified by patients and the community. Our consultations identified three critical areas that we need to integrate into our roles:

• workforce well-being and health human resources;
• Indigenous health, anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion; and
• planetary health and sustainable health care.

Established initiatives supporting our direction

To date, our vision and mission have led to several key initiatives that will continue to be supported and enhanced. Highlights of these include:

• adapting the implementation of Competence by Design (CBD) to enhance residency training;
• updates to the Practice Eligibility Routes to ensure streamlined access for internationally trained medical graduates;
• updates to the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program that more closely align with the realities of practice today; and
• revamping our IT systems with the implementation of our digital transformation to improve royalcollege.ca, while also providing seamless digital access to Royal College services such as enhanced learning and a more user-friendly maintenance of certification dashboard.

As we continue to advance these priorities, we are also committed to building our relationship with members by improving our work systems, educational resources and supports. The next three years will also see the integration of these critical themes into our work.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to provide feedback; your insight played an integral role in shaping our focus. On behalf of the entire team leading the next iteration of the strategic plan, I look forward to sharing the completed plan with you this fall.

In the meantime, I invite you to reach out to me should you have any questions about our work on the strategic plan.

Take care,

Ian

M. Ian Bowmer, MDCM, FRCPC, FRCP, FCAHS, FACP(hon), FRCPI(hon)
Chief Executive Officer (interim) / Directeur général (intérimaire)
Royal College/ Collège royal
Royal College International / Collège royal international