le 1 janvier 2003 Vol 8, No. 5

2003

Welcome back! This has been one of the longest Holiday breaks I can remember and I sincerely hope that you have had the opportunity to spend time with loved ones, family and friends and that you have succeeded in getting some much deserved rest.

The Holiday Break was a very quiet one for me, one in which I spent much needed time with my family reflecting on my good fortune and gently, ever so gently, beginning to come to grips with some of the issues that will face the Faculty over the next year.

The big imperative, of course, is the upcoming LCME accreditation site visit in February. This is our opportunity to show our stuff! to present our curriculum, our students, our teachers and our school to the external world! We have done the introspective work in preparing the Institutional Self Study and we have developed strategies to address our shortcomings. Now the time has come to demonstrate our pride and our sense of accomplishment in a job I believe has been extremely well done.

A second area of immense importance for the Faculty is a fundamental review of our vision. Over the past several months, I have come to the increasing realization that we, as a Faculty, need to re-visit our vision. I have begun to address this question with members of the Dean’s group and with Department Chairs and I raised it publicly for the first time in my opening remarks at the recent Awards of Excellence ceremony (see Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 3-4).

Essentially, given the dramatic changes that our world faces, we need to rethink our place in society and to seriously reexamine how we can make that important and vital difference to our communities and constituencies. Doing the expected will no longer be sufficient; we must strive to do the necessary.

I now turn to every member of Faculty and invite you to join me and your colleagues in thinking seriously about what our renewed vision should be. I would like you to begin by considering 4 questions:

1. What do you want our Faculty to be best known for? 2. What is your major contribution to our Faculty? 3. How would you like to be recognized for your contribution?

Perspectives 4. If you were the Dean, what is the one (and only) mission or value you would most like to see enshrined in our Faculty?

Please e-mail me your response at [email protected] or fax to 562-5457. I look forward to hearing your responses. Your responses will be collated so that I can share them with you. In the New Year I will table a summary document that will serve as the outline for a template that I would like to use for a Faculty-wide discussion over the next 12 months. And over this period, I will meet with Departments, staff, students and residents, both formally and informally, so that, together, we can shape our collective renewed vision. I look forward to your thoughts and comments and I very much look forward to the conversation that will ensue.

A third area of importance to the Faculty and faculty members is resolution of a number of financing issues. There are two particular issues here. The first relates to the need for the provincial government to provide appropriate levels of funding for the additional students we began to enroll in 1998-99. In total we added 39 new students. But government has only provided funding to the amount of 45% of the costs of providing the education. For the moment we are coping well and we remain committed to providing increased funding to teachers in the undergraduate curriculum. And we continue to press our case, together with our colleague faculties of medicine, to the provincial government for appropriate levels of funding – funding that is consistent with the true cost of providing undergraduate medical education; these costs have been measured extensively in our Faculty.

The second issue relates to the ongoing discussions with the Ministry of Health & Long Term Care regarding the possibility of an academic alternate funding plan (AFP) for the academic health sciences center. The negotiation teams are currently exploring the feasibility of entering into a phased AFP process that would begin with an initial distribution of 14 m$ for academic enhancement. This funding would be used to support academic activities of faculty members, the first time in an extraordinarily long time that the Ministry has explicitly acknowledged the need for funding other than clinical income to support the academic mission of our Faculty and its members. (To put the 14 m$ in some perspective, the Faculty currently allocates just over 7 m$ to the clinical departments in support of teaching and research activities.) Although much remains to be done – and even though the outcome is not yet clear – the discussion about the feasibility of an AFP for us is one of the important issues facing us over the next several months.

2003 will be an important year for recruitment and leadership renewal. At present, two major departmental chair search committees are active – surgery and anesthesiology. And recruitment continues at the divisional head level as well as in the basic science departments. In addition, we are actively recruiting to a significant number of Canada Research Chairs and to at least 2 endowed chairs. And finally, as can be seen elsewhere in this issue of Perspectives, recruitment of leaders to the Dean’s Office will continue with the identification of a new Director of Continuing Medical Education to succeed Craig Campbell who has gone on to a leadership position at the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada.

2003 also will be a time for aggressive planning for growth and expansion of our research infrastructure. Active planning is presently underway for the determination of our space needs for the next decade and a working group will be struck in the early new year to develop a consolidated plan for research development in the Faculty. On the education side, I will be taking a proposal for a new and major initiative to Faculty Advisory Board in January. Adoption of this proposal will allow us to develop a platform for sustained innovation in curriculum design and management, in e-curriculum, in evaluation and psychometrics and in education leadership development.

All in all, an exciting year is ahead of us. I am struck by a comment made by one of my colleagues just before the holiday break when we were talking about the upcoming year and its challenges. His response was ‘the issues next year will be the same, only bigger, much bigger’. I suspect he may well be right.

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 2 In the previous issue of Perspectives, I reported on the recipients of the 2002 Faculty of 2002 Awards Medicine Awards of Excellence. Presiding over the ceremony were the Chancellor, Mme of Excellence Huguette Labelle,a nd the Rector and Vice-Chancellor, M. Gilles Patry. The recipients were Barbara Vanderhyden, Rose Goldstein, Ruth Slack, Gillian Lord, Sandy Fyfe and Sylvie Forgues-Martel. This month I present the recipients of the Young Professor Award (David Park), Mentoring Award (Jeffrey Turnbull) and Architect Award (Wilbert Keon) in addition to those individuals who participated in the Let’s Talk Science Program.

David Park, Young Investigator Award

Le Prix du jeune chercheur reconnaît les contributions exceptionnelles d’une personne durant les sept premières années de sa nomination à l’Université d’Ottawa. Cette année, nous célébrons les succès de docteur David Park, professeur adjoint au Département Sylvie Forgues-Martel (centre) is de médecine et scientifique dans le programme des flanked by the Rector, Gilles Patry, neurosciences à l’Institut en recherche de la santé and the Chancellor, Mme Huguette Labelle. Sylvie was one of 6 recipients d’Ottawa. of the 2002 Faculty Awards of Excellence.

The other 5 recipients of 2002 Awards of Excellence are (from r to l) Barbara Vanderhyden, Sandy Fyfe, Rose Goldstein, Gillian Lord and Ruth Slack.

David est originaire d’Ann Arbor d’où il reçoit son BSc en biologie cellulaire et moléculaire en 1989. Il passe ensuite à l’Université Rutgers pour faire son doctorat. Il poursuit ses études postdoctorales au laboratoire de Lloyd Greene à Columbia University où il approfondit ses intérêts dans la mort cellulaire, sujet qui le préoccupe à ce jour. En 1998, il se joint à l’Université d’Ottawa.

David is an immensely talented and prolific investigator. Throughout his young career he has distinguished himself by winning a number of prestigious personal awards. For example, while at Columbia he received an Aaron Diamond post-doctoral fellowship David Park, recipient of the 2002 Young Investiga- and on assuming his position at the tor Award, gets a few pointers from the Rector. he received a Glaxo-Wellcome Award, a MRC Scholarship, a MRC/PMAC Chair and the Promising Scientist Award. His record of achievement is outstanding; a mere 4 years after securing his first independent faculty position, he is on the editorial board of the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry.

I cite from one of the letters of nomination. ‘Dr. Park is a thinking and careful scientist. His contributions to the understanding of the apoptosis process, the role of cell cycle genes in

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 3 cell death and his ability to translate these concepts into investigations at the animal model level have been nothing short of brilliant. He has enormous mentorship qualities to his graduate students and fellows, is a cooperative colleague to his fellow scientists and he is entirely committed to his professional development. He sets high standards of achievement for himself and over time these standards have become the standards that other scientists want to reach. His overall philosophy about the scientific endeavour is that it is important, honourable and fun.’

David reserves a great deal of time for his graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, introducing them to the need to identify important questions and to design critical experiments. In the words of one of his nominators, ‘he is able to distil complex phenomena into clear, testable hypotheses and then adroitly proceed to the experimental design that will test the hypothesis.’ He introduces them also to the pleasures of supervising summer students in preparation for their own careers as scientists and educators. Finally, he ensures that their career objectives and professional development are met by supporting them in securing further training opportunities in outstanding laboratories.

I want to end with two additional quotes that I believe sum up David Park, the individual and the scientist. The first is ‘I would rank David as the most productive and talented [new scientist] that I have seen over my twelve years as a Professor.’ And the second: ‘David is among the finest, most thoughtful individuals that I have worked with during the course of the 27 years I have spent in Ottawa. His gentle style, his optimism, empathy and kindness are always evident. He has been a wonderful ambassador for the University of Ottawa.’

Mme le Chancelier, je vous présente David Park, récipiendaire du prix du jeune chercheur de l’année 2002. Quel bel exemple de la qualité de nos chercheurs, de nos enseignants, de notre avenir.

Jeff Turnbull, Mentor of the Year

The Mentoring Award of the Year is awarded to an individual who has had a marked influence on colleagues, students, residents and fellows and by this influence has contributed to their professional and personal development and growth. It is no surprise that this year’s recipient is Jeff Turnbull, Chair of the Department of Medicine. Jeff has such an impressive record of contributions that, in the time available to me today, all I can do is to merely hint at their substance and importance.

Jeff received his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and his medical degree from Queen’s University. Always an educator – and an exceptionally skilled clinician – Jeff was lured to the University of Ottawa in 1991 as Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Medical Education and Chair of the Division of General Medicine.

As Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Medical Education Jeff was charged with the responsibility of bringing an entirely new curriculum – the problem based learning curriculum – on line at the University of Ottawa. Jeff’s role in implementing the new curriculum was one of a doer, a convincer, a theoretician, a motivator, and a pragmatist. I believe that this accomplishment alone merits particular praise because the adoption of the PBL curriculum has served to catalyze and invigorate our teachers and our students. I attribute this success, in large measure, to Jeff’s creativity and leadership in developing and implementing an exceptional undergraduate medical curriculum that focuses on the appropriate skills, knowledge, attributes and competencies of future physicians.

Mais je n’ai pas encore terminé. En 1996, Jeff devient Vice-doyen à l’éducation à la Faculté de médecine et responsable de la formation post-graduée. Jeff initie les étapes nécessaires pour le développement et la réalisation de notre aventure actuelle en numérisation du

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 4 curriculum. Notre curriculum au premier cycle est le seul au Canada qui utilise l’info route et la technologie de l’information comme approche privilégiée.

En 2001, Jeff devient Directeur du département de médecine à l’Université d’Ottawa, un poste qu’il détient aujourd’hui. J’aimerais terminer le dossier des activités de leadership du docteur Turnbull en ce qui traite ses activités au cabinet du doyen en soulignant ses contributions aux organismes externes. Le docteur Turnbull contribue de façon ardue aux activités du Collège royal du Canada, la Corporation des médecins professionnelles de l’Ontario, le Conseil médical du Canada et the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Throughout his career he has served as a role model and a mentor, in the true sense of the word. In galvanizing attention to the need for ongoing innovation and development of our education portfolios, Jeff has mobilized a generation of young educators within the Faculty, many of whom have gone on to get advanced training in medical education. His commitment to clinical medicine has sparked the influx of a new cohort of evidence based general internists to the point where we can boast of one of the very best such groups in the country.

In addition to his educational and administrative activities, Jeff has an entirely different life and one that I am going to expose publicly for the first time. Jeff s’implique à cœur et âme à résoudre les problèmes de santé des personnes sans abri. Son intérêt humaniste l’a amené à étudier, en collaboration avec des chercheurs de la Faculté des sciences sociales, l’impacte potentielle des interventions médicales et sociales afin d’améliorer la qualité de vie des personnes sans abri. Ceci l’a amené également à un intérêt personnel et professionnel au niveau international. A toutes ces activités Jeff introduit les étudiants et les résidents. Il maintient donc son identité de mentor que cela soit dans le rôle de clinicien, d’avocat, d’humaniste ou de chercheur. Il est mentor non seulement pour ses étudiants mais également pour ses collègues et surtout pour son doyen.

L’impacte de Jeff Turnbull en éducation à l’Université d’Ottawa ou ailleurs est remarquable. Il est novateur, intelligent, claire d’esprit et généreux de son temps et de son énergie. Jeff Turnbull mérite bien le prix du mentorat. Je suis fier de vous présenter Madame le Chancelier la nomination de Jeff Turnbull, récipiendaire du prix du mentorat 2002.

Wilbert J. Keon, Architecte

Madame le Chancelier, le prix d’Architecte est accordé à une personne qui a contribué de façon importante au développement de la Faculté. Parmi les récipiendaires antérieurs je compte Gilles Hurteau, John Seely, Ken Smiley et Antoine d’Iorio, les battiseurs de la Faculté de médecine de l’Université d’Ottawa. Le récipiendaire de cette année se classe parmi ces géants. Je parle évidemment du docteur Wilbert J. Keon, professeur émérite et fondateur, Président et directeur général de l’Institut de cardiologie de l’Université d’Ottawa.

Dr. Keon is a distinguished surgeon who has pioneered numerous surgical and medical approaches to the preservation of myocardial tissue. In many of these Wilbert Keon, Professor Emeritus approaches, he has been simply a man ahead of his time of Surgery is the 2002 recipient of in anticipating the clinical needs of the population and in the Architect Award in recognition of his contributions to the overall foreseeing the role of technology in clinical medicine. acacdemic excellence of the Dr. Keon is, himself, a graduate of the University of Faculty and to Canadian Ottawa, receiving his MD from the University of Ottawa biomedical science. in 1961. After postgraduate training in surgery and

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 5 cardiothoracic surgery at McGill University and the University of Toronto, he joined the Department of Surgery at the University of Ottawa in 1968 at the level of Assistant Professor and Head of the newly created Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. In 1972, he became Director of the University of Ottawa Cardiac Unit, the forerunner of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

In 1974, after 6 years on Faculty, Dr. Keon was promoted to Full Professorship and the following year he began his first term as Chair of the Department of Surgery. In all, Dr. Keon would serve the Faculty as Chair of the Department of Surgery for 15 years and as Chair of the Division of Cardiac Surgery for 23 years, stepping down from this latter position at the time of his official retirement on June 30, 2000. Under his leadership, the Department of Surgery became one of the nation’s leading forces in surgical education.

This chronological summary of Dr. Keon’s career indicates that he has, indeed, had a successful academic career. But it falls short of the man’s accomplishments and his contributions. Throughout his academic career he has received a number of local, national and international awards. Notably, the list gives little hint of the contributions made by Dr. Keon to academic medicine in Canada. He has made his contributions through his scholarship, through his mentoring of others, through his administrative leadership for and on behalf of academic medicine and through his political championship of excellence and justice in health care. He has spent most of his adult life building an icon, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. His dream in building this Institute was to develop world-class science in the service of outstanding health care to reduce premature cardiac death and to promote better health. He has accomplished both aspects admirably.

His aggressive pursuit of approaches to preserve cardiac muscle led him to initiate a series of studies on immediate reperfusion in patients suffering from cardiogenic shock following myocardial infarction. Later, he began to explore the use of technology to build a permanent artificial heart and, later still, he built a team to exploit the potential of positron emission tomography in the diagnosis and management of heart disease. In all of these examples there are two notable themes. The first is that the delay between experimentation and clinical application is extremely short. The second is that Dr. Keon acts as an architect as opposed to the agent. One of his many strengths, in fact, has been his singular ability to identify a problem, sketch out a solution and hire the brightest people who can develop the specific solution to the problem.

In addition to his leadership at the University of Ottawa and to his contributions to medical science, Dr. Keon has made many important contributions to the advancement of excellence in Canadian medical science. He has served with distinction as Vice President of the Medical Research Council of Canada and has been recognized for this service through the creation of a MRC Endowed Lectureship at the University of Ottawa. He has served on the Executive of the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation and on the Executive of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

More recently, as a member of the Senate, Dr. Keon has been a key and influential member on the national scene in articulating policy in support of renewal of the Canadian health care system. Le docteur Keon, en tant que membre de la Commission Kirby, contribue, non seulement au bien-être de la société canadienne mais il contribue, de façon importante et soutenue, au rayonnement de l’Université d’Ottawa et de la Faculté de médecine.

Madame le Chancelier, je vous présente Wilbert J. Keon, Architecte de la Faculté de médecine 2002.

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 6 Michael McBurney (Medicine) has received a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal. The Honours & commemorative medal was created to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee as Queen of Awards England and the Commonwealth. The Golden Jubilee Medal provides an opportunity to look back and recognize those who made our country great. Canada is strengthened when we collectively pay homage to those who distinguish themselves by virtue of their talents and their service to the community and to the country. Michael is the Director of the Cancer Therapeutics Group in the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre.

Simon Davidson (Psychiatry) received the Paul A. Steinhauer Advocacy Award from the Canadian Academy of Child Psychiatry. The award was given to Dr. Davidson in recognition of his role in advocating for children, youth and their families. In accepting the award, Dr. Davidson quoted Nelson Mandela: ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous and talented? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t benefit the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear our presence automatically liberates others …’

John Veinot (Pathology & Laboratory Medicine) has received an Excellence in Education Prize from the University of Ottawa in recognition of the quality of his teaching, the importance of his contributions to education programs of the University, the innovation of his pedagogical initiatives and the warmth of testimonials from colleagues and students attesting to the impact of his initiatives as an educator and as a teacher.

Dr. Paul Dagg (Psychiatry) has been appointed as Assistant Dean, Postgraduate Medical Postgraduate Education following a selection process. Dr. Dagg, who has previously served as Program Medical Director for the Royal College Training Program in Psychiatry, had been serving in an interim capacity as Assistant Dean since the departure of Deborah Davies in May of this Education year. Members of the Selection Committee included:

Brigitte Bonin, Doyenne adjointe, éducation médicale de 1e cycle Diane Cyr, Office of Postgraduate Medical Education Bruce Jackson, Chair, Department of Ophthalmology Carl Nimrod, Chair, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology Rebecca Peterson, Interim Chair, Radiology Tonya Stothart, Resident PGY5 Peter Walker (Chair)

Department The Senate of the University of Ottawa, acting on a request from the Faculty of Medicine, approved the creation of a new Department of Emergency Medicine at its meeting of of December 9, 2002.

Emergency The academic discipline of Emergency Medicine at the University of Ottawa is very highly regarded, nationally and internationally. One of its researchers, Dr. Ian Stiell, is an Medicine internationally recognized authority in the area of clinical decision tools – Dr. Stiell is responsible for the Ottawa Ankle Rule and has been responsible for a number of clinical studies that have literally changed the field. Dr. Stiell is a CIHR Distinguished Scientist and a Member of the Institute of Medicine. It is our expectation that creation of a new

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 7 Department of Emergency Medicine will serve as an academic magnet for further development of research in this discipline.

In creating the Department of Emergency Medicine, the University of Ottawa will be one of four universities in Canada to boast of a Department of Emergency Medicine. Prior to this initiative, the discipline of Emergency Medicine was shared by three parent departments, Medicine, Pediatrics and Family Medicine. All three agree that the creation of a new departmental structure will provide significant benefits to further academic development of the discipline at the University of Ottawa.

The Faculty has created a Selection Committee to identify the inaugural Chair of the new Department. The Committee is chaired by the Dean and includes the following:

Jeff Turnbull, Chair, Department of Medicine Nick Busing, Chair, Department of Family Medicine Joe Reisman, Chair, Department of Pediatrics Meridith Marks, Director, Office of Faculty Development

Representatives of the hospitals will be named in the New Year.

Ian Stiell will act as the Interim Chair of the Department.

Office of I am saddened to report that Dr. James Fryer has resigned as Assistant Dean, Research & Informatics for reasons of ill health. Jim has contributed in a major way to the Office and has Research led a number of initiatives of great importance to the Faculty. He played an important role in the successful CFI initiative to link all of our research institutes together with the University high speed link and he led the development of the CFI initiative for the animal quarter expansion in the last competition. Although the latter proposal was unsuccessful it nevertheless has served as an important building stone for the present CFI letter of intent that was submitted on December 18, 2002. Finally, Jim – together with Susan Tolnai – initiated the Institutional Self Study process for our LCME accreditation visit scheduled for February 2003. In all, Jim has had a solid record of achievement as Assistant Dean, Research & Informatics and has made important contributions to our Faculty.

As always, Jim has thought of the needs of the Faculty. He has asked to be relieved of his responsibilities in the Dean’s Office so that continuity of the Faculty’s requirements in the research sector can be assured. In light of the new CFI competition, I have asked Robert Haché to assume the position of Interim Assistant Dean, Research with particular responsibility for Special Projects. As Interim Assistant Dean, Rob will interact with Department Chairs, Institute Directors, and researchers to facilitate and coordinate the development of the scientific vision specific to our CFI submission.

Rob can be reached at 562.5800 x 8390 or [email protected].

Director, Nominations and applications for the position of Director of the Office of Continuing Medical Education are solicited. The Director of the Office of Continuing Medical Continuing Education, who also will hold the position of Director of Continuing Medical Education at , is responsible for coordination of all CME activities of the Faculty of Medical Medicine. S/he actively promotes the development of an environment and a series of needs based learning opportunities that will allow physicians to maintain and upgrade their skills Education and competencies. The Director oversees the development and evaluation of courses designed to meet the needs of specialist physicians and general practitioners. In particular, the Director will ensure the implementation of state of the art knowledge translation

Perspectives Vol. 8, No. 5, Page 8 approaches, including the use of web based technologies, to serve the professional development needs of local and distant health care providers. A key area will be the development of strategies to provide physicians with personal performance data in relation to defined standards of practice. The incumbent, who will work with a team of dedicated support staff and a CME advisory group, must have knowledge of the continuing professional development programs and accreditation standards of, and will develop close working relationships with the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada and the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Finally, the Director will be responsible for the development of a research program to assess educational methodologies, evaluation procedures and approaches to the provision of CME activities.

Please submit nominations and/or statements of interest directly to me ([email protected]) or to my office c/o Pascal Laliberté ([email protected]) by February 1, 2003.

Perspectives is a publica- tion of the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Medi- cine at the University of Ottawa. It is published monthly from September through June and is available by email or on the web (www.uottawa.ca/ academic/med).

To subscribe please contact Julie Conrad at 562.5643.

Please send your comments to: [email protected]

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