Welcome to the Fall issue of Bebo. Fall always reminds me of heading back to school and writing that quintessential “what I did last summer” essay. I hope that everyone had time to rest and recuperate this summer. I had a chance to take my family to New York, go to a medical school reunion in New Brunswick (I won’t say what anniversary this is!) travel to Baltimore to teach at the inaugural Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education Leadership Institute and travel to Glasgow to attend the Association of Medical Education in Europe conference. The fall is a time for renewal and the Office of CEPD will be taking this seriously with a focus on strategic planning for the next 5 years.
We remain very committed to supporting our distributed continuing education providers situated in all the clinical departments in the Faculty. Last year was a record year for providing U of T accredited conferences despite the recession. I am encouraged by the enthusiasm and increasing attention to performance improvement and simulation based courses with small groups meeting longitudinally or intensely over several days. We are convinced that this results in more effective learning, behaviour change in health professionals and improved health care.
We are looking forward to the initiation of the Comprehensive Family Practice Review in the Fall, a unique collaboration between the CPSO, the Office of CEPD and Department of Family and Community Medicine. Family doctors who are returning to clinical practice and others with identified learning needs will participate in a multi-modal longitudinal program. Saturday at the University will become Friday and Saturday at the university as we retool this longstanding longitudinal course for family physicians.
We will also be focusing more on supporting individual health professional learners who are registered in Office of CEPD managed courses. By providing individualized websites for participants, access to the library and direct connection to the Colleges to store their CE credits, we will be providing a new unique service to our learners. We are trying to honor our tagline, “Better Education for Better Outcomes!”
Last winter, we welcomed Dr. Simon Kitto to Toronto in his new role as a Scientist in the Joint Knowledge Translation Program at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Scientist at the Wilson Centre and more recently as Director of Research in the Office of CEPD. We are featuring Simon in the Researcher’s Corner of this issue of Bebo.
Our Office is open to anyone who wants to come and discuss CEPD plans in the future, whether its related to formal courses and conferences, individualized approaches to learning at work, performance and practice review strategies or scholarship and research in CEPD.
Warmest regards,
Ivan Silver