MY PORTFOLIO
My portfolio consists of some of my most significant education scholarship and creative professional activities. On some of these projects and activities I have collaborated with others.
What is education scholarship?
There are many definations of scholarship. The Canadian Association of Medical Education (CAME) defines "Education Scholarship" as an umbrella term which can encompass both research and innovation in health professions education. Quality in education scholarship is attained through work that is: peer-reviewed, publicly disseminated and provides a platform that others can build on.
What is creative professional activity?
Creative professional activity are activities that include 3 broad categories:
Professional Innovation and Creative Excellence (such as an invention or conceptual innovation)
Contributions to the Development of Professional Practices (such as leadership in the profession)
Exemplary Professional Practice (such as practice that is emulated)
EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP
CHANGECME - COMMITMENT TO CHANGE PRACTICE: An online tool and portfolio for physicians and other health professionals
As physicians and other health professionals, we all attend lectures, seminars, workshops, rounds, listen to podcasts, watch webinars and read journal articles. But the sad truth is that even though we think we are benefiting from these activities, research tells us that it might not be changing our practice and helping our patients as much as we think. What we also know from research, is that if you commit to changing something after one of these activities and you are reminded about this later, you are more likely to change your practice and help your patients.
ChangeCME (www.ChangeCME.com) allows you to track what you learn and change your practice. READ MORE
THE ESSENCE OF EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP: ALONGITUDINAL FACULTY DEVELOPMENT COURSE
Education Scholarship is valued and expected of physicians and health care professionals in community academic affiliated hospitals. However the context in which these clinicians teach and practice is very different than those in Academic Health Science Centres. We addressed this gap by developing a longitudinal interprofessional education scholarship faculty development program. The construct of emergent curriculum design was embedded to enhance its success. The goals of the program were to: develop basic competencies in education scholarship and create an interprofessional community of practice. READ MORE
CROWDSOURCING: AN INSTRUCTIONAL METHOD AT AN EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONTINUING EDUCATION COURSE
It struck me during one of the Emegency Medicine Update Europe Conferences that I organize, that there is an incredible amount of expertise and experience in the room during all the presentations. While we have an "expert" standing at the front of the room giving a presentation, the richness of interaction was during the discussion and debate. Many in the audience have also given continuing education presentations and were leaders in the field of Emergency Medicine. I wondered how I can harness the wisdom of the crowd through a facilitated conversation? READ MORE
DAILY LEARNER FEEDBACK & ASSESSMENT TOOL: A Community Academic Hospital Approach
At North York General Hospital, we developed an online solution to provide daily feedback and assessment to our medical trainees. A paper based daily encounter card was first developed by the hospital’s medical education committee based on literature review and existing tools being used by hospital departments. The tool was standardized across all hospital departments based on consensus of the education leads and piloted. Further revisions of the tool were incorporated based on feedback from teachers and learners. A hospital-wide web-based learner feedback and assessment system was developed using SharePoint (Microsoft corp.). READ MORE
HANDOUTS AT EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONFERENCES
Are they worth the paper they’re printed on?
As a presenter and teacher, handouts have always been a frustration of mine. Students and other learners are fixated on whether there is handout. Organizers are fixated on whether we get our handouts in on time for distribution. Most of the time handouts are simply reproduction of Power Point slides for which Power Point was never designed. It was my hypothesis that handouts at contiuning education events though often required and expected, are rarely referred to a later point. I undertook this study at Emergency Medicine Update Europe Conference in 2011 in Italy where I had a captive audience for 5 consecutive days. READ MORE
EMERGENCY MEDICINE OBSERVERSHIPS FOR PRE-CLERKSHIP STUDENTS
Why Every University Should Have One
It has long been recognized the value of mentorship in guiding and developing young professional careers. During my time as Director of Emergency Medicine Undergradutae Education at the University of Toronto (2005-2010), establishing apportunities for observerships in Emergency Departments had become a priority. Up till this point, some students with lots of initiative, lots of chutzpah, and lots of luck arranged shadowing experiences on their own. But all this was coming to an end, as almost all the ED's in Toronto were shutting their to student observers. READ MORE
EMERGENCY MEDICINE CLERKSHIP ENCOUNTER AND PROCEDURE LOGGING USING HANDHELD COMPUTERS
Tracking medical student clinical encounters became an accreditation requirement of medical schools in 2005. At University of Toronto Medical School, a pilot project using handheld computers was developed in the Department of Family and Community Medicine – called "eLog". Working with the Faculty of Medicine Academic Computing Department, I adapted the Family Medicine elog for the Emergency Medicine setting. READ MORE
CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY
DEVELOPING NOVEL EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONTINUING EDUCATION EVENTS
I have spent a significany part of my career conceiving, developing and contibuting to continuing education and professional development programs in Emergency Medicine. With the significant advances of social media and free open access medical education (FOAM) , just-in-time continuing education, and many forms of e-learning - traditional formats for continuing education have been called into question with regrad to their relavance and impact on learning (and change in practice). I have always believed that learning is a social activity that requires people to come together. READ MORE
INNOVATION EX
In December of 2013, my CEO dropped into my office and asked me to take the lead planning this Innovation Fair that he and his colleagues had envisioned. The CEO's of 6 large community hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area had recently formed the Joint Centres for Transformative Healthcare Innovation - an innovation collaborative. The first initiative of this collaborative was to showcase innovations from the 6 partner hospitals. READ MORE
EFFECTIVE PRESENTATIONS - CHANGING TRADITIONAL DOGMA 1 PRESENTATION AT A TIME
Ever since I was in medical school, I would sit through lectures and presentations and wonder how they could be done better. To say I was underwhelmed and uninspired by many of them would be an understatement. My first foray into the area was "how to use powerpoint more effectively" with a special emphasis on what I refered to as "medical PowerPoint". But it didn't take long for me to get bored with teaching the technical aspects of how to use PowerPoint because I recognized a greater challenge - many people didn't know when to use PowerPoint (or more accurately when NOT to use PowerPoint). READ MORE
IT’S MORE THAN JUST TRAVEL CME:
AN EMBEDDED ETHNOGRAPHY OF A UNIQUE EMERGENCY MEDICINE CONFERENCE
Travel-based continuing medical education (CME) has become a popular format for physicians looking to combine education with travel. However these programs do not usually include shared group activities and when they
do, they are often social, sedentary events. In addition, the quality of these programs has been called into question.
Emergency Medicine Update (EMU) Europe www.EMUEurope.com is a unique biennial accredited CME Conference which combines high quality Emergency Medicine focused education with organized group physical and social activities in European locales. READ MORE
INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
Beginning In 2010, I was responsible for leading and advancing Interprofessional Education at North York General Hospital in collaboration with Susan Woollard, the Director of Professional Practice. We decided that the best way to lead this change was to build capacity amongst the staff and physicians at NYGH. An interprofessional team from the hospital (including myself), enrolled in the 5 day program at the University of Toronto called "ehpic" "Educating Health Professionals in Interprofessional Care". From this course we developed a novel interprofessional education teacher development program called "iPed" - "Interprofessional Education Development". READ MORE
EMERGENCY MEDICINE CLERKSHIP CORE COMPETENCIES: DEVELOPING A CANADIAN CONSENSUS USING A DELPHI PROCESS
This was a project that I lead starting in 2007 in collaboration with Jill McEwen, Trevor Langhan, Richard Lee, Rob Woods, and Glen Bandiera - colleagues from across Canada. We had recently formed a Canadian Emergency Medicine Undergraduate Committee consisting of Education Leads from across Canada. One of our early projects we identified was the need to establish some type of standardized curriculum in Emergency Medicine at the undergraduate level. READ MORE
TEACHING HOW TO TEACH IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
Since the early 2000's, I have spent a considerable amount of time "teaching others how to teach" This is often refered to as "faculty development", an area of medical education that is receiving increasing recognition as an important and valued component of medical education. Many of my efforts in this area have been focussed on "teaching others to teach in the Emergency Department." READ MORE
TEACHERS' PERCEIVED NEEDS IN FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
One of the first steps in any curriculum development is conducting a "needs assessment" This can consist of both perceived and unperceived needs. Since I have a role as a faculty developer for both University based faculty (Emergency Medicine) and hospital based staff and physicians, I have speant a considerable abount of time conducting needs assessments of all these teachers. READ MORE
EMERGENCY MEDICINE UNDERGRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION IN CANADA
From 2005 to 2010, I was the Director of Emergency Medicine Undergraduate Education at the University of Toronto. At the time, Emergency Medicine (EM) as a discipline in Canada was only 25 years old. We recognized the importance of EM teaching during the undergraduate medical years had increasing relevance. However Emergency Medicine as a formal part of undergraduate medical curriculum in Canada was still in its infancy. READ MORE
A NIGHT SHIFT IN EMERGENCY
In 2014, our colleagues at the North York General Hospital Foundation approached me with an idea that they wanted to highlight our Emergency Department at their annual Chairman's Circle Lecture Series that honours the community's philanthropic leadership. I told them to give me a few days to think about this. I enlisted my friend and colleague, Andrea Ennis, the Clinical Team Manager of our ED and we dreamed up this wild night shift in the ER. We pitched them the idea, and what follows is how the evening unfolded ... READ MORE
SEVERE ACUTE RESPIRATORY SYNDROME (SARS)
In the winter of 2003 SARS outbreak was experienced in Toronto. North York General Hospital, where I work, was the epicentre of the second wave of SARS to hits the city. As a result, the hospital was closed for over 3 months but continued to treat patients with SARS on inpatient wards and critical care units. The Emergency Department (ED) initially diagnosed and treated these patients and subsequently set up a SARS Assessment Clinic (SAC) open to the public. READ MORE
IMPROVING CARE OF SUBACUTE PATIENTS IN THE EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
This was a project that our department undertook in 2007. Collaborating with colleagues from our ED, including; Andrea Ennis RN, George Paraghamian, Helen Richard RN, Tim Rutledge MD, Susan Woollard RN - we recognized that we were doing a failry good job at caring for our sickest patients and our ambulatory patients. However, the patients in the middle - those with abdominal pain, renal colic (often CTAS 3) were having extraordinary lengths of stays in our ED. So our ED undetook a "Kaizan". READ MORE