Implication Statement The Choosing Wisely Resource Stewardship Certificate demonstrates that students can meaningfully develop practical resource stewardship and evidence-informed decision-making skills through a virtual, interprofessional and case-based curriculum. We found that combining student-led discussions with guidance from diverse healthcare professionals helped learners connect resource stewardship theory to real-world clinical decisions and strengthen patient-centred care practices. The program’s virtual format allows institutions to implement flexible, effective content on resource stewardship to learners, addressing a key curriculum gap. Expanding the Choosing Wisely Resource Stewardship Certificate to include recorded sessions or asynchronous modules will further expand its impact.
Implication Statement Is your resident call schedule fairly distributed between your residents? We thought so for Family Medicine in Saskatchewan, but an analysis of two years of schedule data indicated otherwise. Over the two-year program, the average per-resident call burden ranged from 0.44 to 1.2 shifts per week. Using the ratio of total shifts to total weeks to consistently quantify resident call burden across sites, we highlight the value of longer-term metrics and demonstrate how other institutions may also develop more equitable call schedules.
Implication Statement A targeted surgical airway session with interactive lecture and teaching is useful in undergraduate medical education settings with limited prior critical care and otolaryngology teaching. This session allows students to learn basic surgical airway anatomy, devices, and clinical scenarios. It requires minimal personnel, utilizes online lecture resources, and uses cost-effective reusable products obtained largely from expired hospital inventory. The session aims to enhance clinical competency for learners in clerkship when caring for surgical airway patients. The participants in the session should be able to understand the anatomy of surgical airways, understand the steps of performing an emergency surgical airway, and assess and manage surgical airways.
Background: Faculty in health professions education (HPE) play a key role in assessing student learning through classroom-based assessments. While researchers have studied admission and licensure assessments, we know little about how classroom assessments are validated. Through validation practices, faculty help ensure that decisions about student learning are well-supported. This study explores how HPE faculty validate classroom-based assessments. Methods: The authors conducted a qualitative interpretive descriptive study. Twenty faculty members in HPE from four Canadian universities were recruited for individual interviews using quota sampling. Two team members analyzed the qualitative data through inductive thematic analysis and held discussions with the team to reach a consensus. Results: Although they do not refer to recommended practices by name, participants used many means to ensure the quality of their classroom-based assessments. When preparing their assessments, they consider elements such as authenticity, content representativity and adequate preparation of students. During assessment, they pay attention to elements such as plagiarism and support. Following the assessment, they make decisions on scoring strategy and process and use assessment data to adjust assessments. Conclusion: Faculty members in HPE recognize the importance of validation and used multiple strategies to document validity evidence. To better support faculty in their validation practices, it is valuable to understand current approaches and provide adequate resources to build on existing validation practices.
Implication Statement: Many medical students at the University of Ottawa report difficulty in finding a research supervisor. “Meet the Researcher” is a one-hour one-on-one speed networking event that has been run regularly by the University of Ottawa’s Pediatrics Special Interest Group (PedSIG) and the Department of Pediatrics of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) since 2017. The initiative facilitates efficient introductions between medical students and researchers to support the establishment of well-matched research partnerships. This event format is preferred by medical students and researchers for initiating research partnerships, and is adaptable to both in-person or virtual settings.
Implication Statement Physicians at our centre have enthusiastically supported a Quality Improvement initiative aimed at achieving a high proportion of physician-submitted incident reports. We uncovered some serious safety incidents and recurring safety themes based on review of these physician-submitted reports and decided to embed these local data in a realistic simulation scenario. Our innovative escape room format for the simulation was an engaging and effective way to teach medical learners about patient safety concepts and how to recognize and respond to safety incidents. We encourage colleagues at other centres to try this strategy for delivering patient safety education!
Background: Leadership in Canadian medical education continues to be shaped by hierarchical, Western-derived paradigms that inadequately address systemic inequities, reconciliation, and the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There is a pressing need for leadership models that reflect Indigenous worldviews and respond to the challenges of medical education in the twenty-first century. Purpose: This paper introduces the Pedagogy of Peace—a theoretical framework grounded in Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe teachings—as a novel conceptual model for medical education leadership. While originally developed as a curricular framework, its teachings hold important implications for re-imagining how leadership is understood, practiced, and cultivated in academic medicine. Framework: The Pedagogy of Peace is structured around four interrelated dimensions: knowing (self-in-relation), understanding (nurturing a good mind), doing (strengths-based action), and honouring (peace-focused solutions). Together, these principles articulate a holistic and relational approach to leadership that emphasizes positionality, reciprocity, integrity, and balance across physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual domains. Implications: By positioning the Pedagogy of Peace alongside existing leadership competencies (e.g., CanMEDS, AFMC frameworks), this paper advances a vision of leadership that is relational, peace-focused, and strengths-based. This theoretical contribution suggests pathways for medical schools to engage meaningfully with reconciliation, diversify leadership practices, and embed Indigenous epistemologies into institutional governance. Conclusion: The Pedagogy of Peace offers a theoretically grounded, Indigenous-informed model for leadership in medical education. By shifting how leadership is conceptualized, it opens new possibilities for cultivating leaders who can guide Canadian medical education toward equity, sustainability, and reconciliation.
Rural and northern Indigenous communities in Saskatchewan continue to face barriers in accessing timely and culturally safe healthcare. To address workforce shortages and digital exclusion, we co-developed a community-based virtual healthcare training initiative focused on building Indigenous-led capacity to support virtual care delivery within home communities. Grounded in Indigenous pedagogy and the Two-Eyed Seeing approach, this descriptive case study reports on the design, implementation, and synthesized experiential insights arising from early program delivery. Delivered in partnership with the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT), the Virtual Health Hub Assistant Certificate Program equips Indigenous learners with both technical skills and cultural competencies to facilitate virtual care in their home communities. Training design was intentionally scaffolded to support digital confidence, relational accountability, and leadership development. Consistent with a community-engaged program evaluation approach, experiential reflections, informal feedback, and operational observations arising during program delivery were collaboratively documented and synthesized by program leads; no formal qualitative and quantitative data were collected, and no human participant data were generated. Graduates are now working or preparing to work within their own remote and rural communities, supporting virtual visits, improving workflow integration, and strengthening trust and patient comfort with digital health systems. Clinicians communicated increased efficiency, while learners expressed a sense of purpose, belonging, and local leadership. This report illustrates how Indigenous-led curriculum, community governance, and localized capacity-building can contribute to the sustainability of virtual care and advance digital health equity, while also identifying areas for future community-defined evaluation. Our experience underscores that ethical virtual care requires educators to centre community values, contextual knowledge, and long-term workforce development.
Health professions education research must integrate Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA) principles to ensure meaningful and impactful initiatives. Embedding these principles into research methods from the outset helps maintain the integrity of the research and ensures its outcomes align with EDIA values. Recognizing the limited guidance on incorporating EDIA principles into non-equity-related HPE survey methodology, we developed guidelines to address this gap. This led to the creation of ‘Five Ways to Get a Grip on Embedding EDIA into Survey Design for non-equity related Health Professions Education Research,’ which includes guidelines for integrating (1) diverse sources of knowledge, (2) usability, (3) context sensitivity, (4) bidirectionality, and (5) accessibility. Applying these guidelines can help make surveys inclusive and respondent-centered, providing a strong foundation for enhancing survey design and embedding EDIA principles within health professions education research.
At the University of Toronto, in collaboration with Special Olympics Ontario (SOO), we integrated individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) into first-year clinical skills sessions through the existing volunteer patient program. Students reported increased confidence and communication skills, while volunteers felt respected and empowered. This initiative addresses a critical training gap by offering early, authentic exposure to a population often marginalized in healthcare. Other institutions can adopt this model to foster more well-rounded, inclusive medical trainees. Embedding individuals with IDD into clinical education improves learner preparedness and promotes equity, empathy, and patient-centered care across diverse healthcare settings.
The Health Advocate Role remains challenging to teach, assess, and study. Mapping the health professions education (HPE) literature—while considering the influence of context—can offer a more nuanced understanding of how the role is conceptualized and enacted across the HPE landscape. This scoping review aims to support the contextualized implementation of the Health Advocate Role.
Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) experience persistent communication barriers in healthcare, limiting their autonomy and participation. Narrative medicine is a clinical approach that centres patients’ stories to inform and enable more humanistic care. CREATE (Cultivating Reflection, Empathy, and Awareness in Telling Experiences) adapts narrative medicine principles to an arts-based workshop for adults with IDDs to enhance communication for both participants and healthcare student facilitators. By engaging trainees directly with patient narratives in community settings, CREATE provides a replicable model for inclusive, patient-centered medical education and care.
Implication Statement To enhance students’ interpersonal skills and reduce hospitalized patients’ feeling of isolation, we developed Heartful Visits, an on-campus healthcare volunteer coordination hub that organizes non-clinical visits focused on conversations, companionship, and emotional support. In this paper, we will detail its design, implementation, and early outcomes to provide a replicable methodology and to inspire medical students at other universities to adapt and expand upon this model. Through this dual focus on student education and patient care, the program has the potential to improve student empathy and communication skills, along with reducing patient isolation and improving psychosocial wellbeing.
