Speakers

Allan Peterkin is a full Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Toronto, where he heads the Program in Health, Arts and Humanities
(www.health-humanities.com).

He is the author of 14 books for adults on medical humanities, cultural history, narrative medicine, human sexuality and physician wellness including “Staying Human During Residency Training-How To Survive and Thrive After Medical School (now in its sixth edition). Recent medical humanities textbooks authored /co-edited by Dr. Peterkin include: "Portfolio To Go-1000 Prompts and Provocations For Clinical Learners" (University of Toronto Press), "Keeping Reflection Fresh-A Practical Guide for Clinical Educators" (Kent State) and "Health Humanities in Postgraduate Medical Education-A Handbook To The Heart of Medicine" (Oxford)

Dr. Peterkin is a founding editor of ARS MEDICA: A Journal of Medicine, The Arts and Humanities (www.ars-medica.ca) and has been a humanities editor with the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and Medical Humanities (BMJ). He serves on advisory boards with the International Health Humanities Network, AMH (The Association of Medical Humanities-UK) and was a co-founder (with Prof. Pamela Brett-MacLean) of CREATING SPACE (Canada's annual Health Humanities meeting, a CCME pre-conference.).

Dr. Carol Ann Courneya has a PhD from the University of British Columbia and a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cardiovascular Physiology from Melbourne Australia. She is the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC, an Associate Professor in the department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences and the theme co-lead for Wellness and Resiliency in the medical program at UBC. Her career long research interests have been a combination of Cardiovascular Science and Medical Education. Specifically, she has focused her medical education research on the role of art-making in the learning of medicine by trainees (students and residents) and practitioners. In 2010 she was the founding co-director (along with Dr. Brett-MacLean) of White Coat Warm heART -the National Art Exhibit for Health Care trainees and practitioners. White Coat Warm heArt is now in it’s eleventh year and Dr. Courneya co-curates the exhibit along with Dr. Michiko Maruyama. In addition, Dr. Courneya is the director of Heartfelt Images and Artodontia, an online gallery of cardiac-inspired art made by medical and dental students (hosted for free viewing in the Art Gallery at teachingmedicine.com).

In 2006, shortly before completing her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies (focused on arts and health) at the University of British Columbia, Pamela Brett-MacLean, PhD, co-founded the Arts & Humanities in Health & Medicine program at the University of Alberta (uab.ca/ahhm), with Dr. Verna Yiu, now President, and CEO of Alberta Health Services. As AHHM director she has introduced a wide range of innovative teaching and learning initiatives informed by relational, arts-based and reflexive approaches. In 2010, she worked with Dr. Carol Ann Courneya to introduce the White Coat, Warm heART exhibition, now a featured aspect of the Canadian Conference for Medical Education (CCME). In 2011, with Dr. Allan Peterkin, she co-founded “Creating Space,” an annual meeting organized in advance of CCME, serving as conference co-chair in 2011 (Toronto) and 2012 (Banff). In 2018, with Peterkin and Barbara Sibbald (CMAJ, Humanities), she helped to found the Canadian Association for Health Humanities. She has widely presented on her work, authoring numerous articles and co-edited texts relevant to the ever-expanding field of health humanities, including Keeping Reflection Fresh (2016) with Peterkin, and Art+Medicine Collaborative Practice (2019) with Lianne McTavish. An associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry, she also engages in research and graduate student supervision.

Dr. Wendy Stewart is originally from Scotland. She has a PhD from UBC, an MD from the University of Calgary, and completed her paediatrics and neurology fellowships at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax. In 2019, she completed her Master’s in Medical Education from Dundee University. Currently she works as a paediatric neurologist in New Brunswick and is Director of Humanities at Dalhousie University. She seeks out opportunities to integrate the humanities across the continuum of medical education: to foster critical thinking, enhance wellbeing and deepen understanding of the patient and family experience. Her current research interests are the use of the humanities to: understand the lived experience of children with epilepsy; enhance clinical reasoning; and explore the transformative power of orchestral music for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Her master’s in medical education focussed on power and hierarchy in health care teams and developing a concept of interprofessional identity. She is using this experience to work with teams in practice; seeking to change culture and provide a more supportive and caring healthcare environment.

Dr. Rob Whyte MD MEd FRCP(C) is the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University. He works clinically as an anesthesiologist with Hamilton Health Sciences. Dr. Whyte studied Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo before entering Medicine at McMaster University. His Master’s in Education at the University of Toronto focused on the intersections of culture, medical education, medicine, and healthcare. As such, he has been involved with work on several initiatives within McMaster’s Faculty of Health Sciences including interprofessional education, professionalism, and work on creating more diverse and inclusive educational environments.

Dr. Lawrence Grierson PhD is an education scientist with the Department of Family Medicine, Program for Educational Research, Innovation, and Theory (MERIT), Program for Community and Rural Education (Mac-CARE), and the Undergraduate MD Program at McMaster University; appointments through which he conducts interdisciplinary research on technical skill expertise, the transfer of learning, clinical learning experiences, simulation-based learning, and approaches to quality improvement and program evaluation in education. More recently, Lawrence has been focusing on the methodological, conceptual, and administrative challenges of inter-institutional data sharing for educational research. Collectively, this work aims to advance education theory in order to better understand the downstream impacts that education reform has on health system outcomes.

Liz completed her PhD in Medical Sciences (Field: Health Services Research) in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto in 2004 and is a full professor in the School of Rural and Northern Health (SRNH) at Laurentian University. She joined SRNH in 2007 where she was the Director from 2011- 2018. Since 2012, Liz has been the Research Director for the Physician Assessment and Clinical Education (PACE) Program at the University of California (UC) San Diego and holds adjunct appointments with the Faculties of Medicine at UC San Diego and Texas A&M.

Her research interests lie in the areas of physician performance, medical regulation, continuing professional development, and program evaluation. Her current research activities investigate the factors that influence practice performance throughout a physician's career, particularly focusing on understanding the relationships between performance, the practice environment and continuing professional development.

Dr. Mahan Kulasegaram is a Scientist at the Wilson Centre and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. His work in the MD Program examines how data from programmatic assessment can support theory-driven research on expertise development and assessment for learning. He is a member of the Barcelona and OMSORC Consortiums and will be moderating the symposium.