Message from the Director, Integrated Physician Scientist Training Program
The University of Toronto is internationally recognized for excellence in physician scientist training programs. The Integrated Physician Scientist Training Program (IPSTP) offers a competency-based, flexible, and customizable integrated training pathway, building on the strengths of our existing physician scientist training programs.
The Combined MD/PhD Program is an integral part of our training pathway - it is the best and largest MD/PhD Program in Canada. Once in the program, we are deeply committed to the success of our students, providing mentoring, academic, career and financial support. The dedicated support we provide results in the highest caliber of trainees. We see this reflected in the number of highly competitive research award recipients and outstanding publication records. Their impact is also felt within the community, with MD/PhD learners taking on a variety of leadership roles both within and beyond the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. Indeed, approximately 70 percent of our MD/PhD alumni who have completed all of their training have full time academic positions and are actively engaged in research. Importantly, our program serves as a pipeline to strengthen the University of Toronto research community with over forty percent of our graduates remaining in Toronto. As we continue to strengthen and grow the MD/PhD program, we also solidify the position of the University of Toronto and our hospital partners as worldwide leaders in healthcare research.
This past year, we celebrated seven outstanding graduates from the MD/PhD program as well as nine new learners who accepted the offer to begin their MD/PhD journey. In addition to providing learners with a curriculum focused on developing physician scientist competencies, two of the topics covered at a MD/PhD retreat held in the fall were wellness and peer mentoring were which we continue to centre in our program.
The Comprehensive Research Experience for Medical Students (CREMS) Program led by Dr. Catharine Walsh continues to be highly valued, with 65 learners participating. This includes each CREMS participant presenting their research at Medical Student Research Day, an annual one-day conference showcasing research projects undertaken by Temerty Medicine medical students.
The Graduate Diploma in Health Research (GDipHR) also led by Dr. Catharine Walsh, provides medical students an opportunity to participate in the continuum of research – from idea creation to data collection to scientific publication and/or presentation at a scholarly meeting – via a longitudinal research program. Now in its fifth year, 9 students were accepted into the GDipHR this year.
The Clinician Investigator Program (CIP) continues to offer a comprehensive career development curriculum along with formal research training to support learners in residency programs to develop as clinician investigators. Twenty-two new residents were accepted in the CIP while 17 graduated from the program. The second annual in-person CIP annual symposium was held in November 2023. The symposium included an invited keynote address by Dr. Amin Madani as well as several financial wellbeing and grant writing workshops and an opportunity for CIP trainees to share their research.
We are very proud of the learner achievements, curricular developments and community building that has occurred in the 2023-24 academic year and look forward to the many exciting opportunities that lay ahead for the IPSTP in the future.
Professor Nicola Jones
Director, Integrated Physician Scientist Training Program
Temerty Faculty of Medicine
Program Innovations
Integrated Physician Scientist Mentorship Academy
Creating a strong community of Toronto-based physician scientists through mentoring relationships is critical to supporting physician scientist trainees. We are planning on piloting a novel mentorship network whose design has been deliberately crafted with mentees and mentors at the centre. We recognize that for physician scientists, a number of different mentoring relationships are critical to their long-term success in the multiple endeavours they pursue: medical/clinical excellence, research aims, and career goals in academic medicine. Participating in this program is an opportunity for both trainees and faculty to build meaningful professional relationships within the community, learn from one another, and grow together in a group setting.
Accelerated Research Residency Program for MD PhD students
The PSTP Accelerated Research Training Pathway is a proposed pathway that will allow post-graduate trainees who have a significant research focus (MD-PhD graduates) to develop a personalized competence based clinical training that integrates research into their training programs. Pilot departments involved so far are Paediatrics, Surgery, Psychiatry, and Medicine. Great progress has been made in moving this project forward and we look forward to continued engagement from our community to support the development of this pathway.
Online research training modules for Clinician Investigator Program
In collaboration with CIHR health research training platforms, we are developing individual modules for current research-intensive trainees (e.g., MD-PhD and CIP). Content generated by local experts is provided to a third-party developer to create the modules. End user review and feedback will be required prior to finalizing content of the modules. Publication and implementation of the modules will occur when complete.
Education Scholarship
Our MD/PhD learners were actively engaged in scholarship activities for the 2023-2024 academic year. Representatives from the Integrated Physician Scientist Training Programs participated in national and international medical education conferences and were highly productive in knowledge translation of their work through impactful publications. View a complete list of publications on our website.
Data on MD PhD program learners training, trajectories and training satisfaction is lacking at the National level. To address this gap, the Clinician Investigator Trainee Association of Canada (CITAC), including several MD PhD learners from Temerty Faculty of Medicine with Dr. Jones as the senior faculty lead, developed and distributed a national survey focused on Training Outcomes and Satisfaction in Canadian MD/PhD Programs. The results of the national survey describing the demographics and professional characteristics of these cohorts, novel data on the training trajectories, research productivity, and training satisfaction of MD/PhD program alumni and current MD+ trainees was recently accepted for publication. The authors include Mimosa Luigi, Charles Yin, Ehsan Misaghi, Robert Lao, Bryce Bogie, Jillian Macklin, Andy Zeng, Nicola L. Jones.
Awards
Learners in the MD/PhD Program continue to be recognized through various awards. This past year, 11 CIHR Vanier Awards, 8 CIHR Doctoral Awards and 2 CIHR Masters Awards were awarded to learners in our program. These are just a few highlights of the financial awards bestowed upon our learners, view a complete list of awards on our website.
Special learner highlights from this year’s International Congress on Academic Medicine (ICAM) conference included:
ICAM/AFMC Honourable Mention Poster Award: Saim Imran for the poster titled "Development of a screen-printed biosensing platform for the assessment of β-secretase activity in cellular lysates".
ICAM/AFMC Gold Poster Award: Prajay Shah for the poster titled “Single-neuron excitability in health and disease". Prajay was also selected as one of eight students for the second round of judging by previous Gairdner Award winners and foundations members. Following the second round of judging, Prajay was recognized as a Gairdner Awardee (Top 4 Posters) which includes an all-expense paid invite to the Gairdner Science Week & Gala Events in Toronto
ICAM/AFMC Gold Poster Award: Robert Lao for the poster titled "Reducing the risks of complex pediatric cardiovascular surgery using GLP-1 peptides". Robert was also selected as one of eight students for the second round of judging by previous Gairdner Award winners and foundations members. Following the second round of judging, Robert was recognized as a Gairdner Awardee (Top 4 Posters) which includes an all expense paid invite to the Gairdner Science Week & Gala Events in Toronto and as the Lindau Nominee (Top Poster) which includes a nomination by the Canadian Student Health Research Forum to a future Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings in Germany.
The inaugural one-day Canadian Medical Student Research Competition took place in April 2024 and brought together undergraduate medical students from each accredited Canadian Faculty of Medicine in each of two streams: MD student and Combined-Degree student. This year’s winner in the MD Stream was our very own Charmi Shah, University of Toronto - There is No Planet-B: Operating Room Sustainability Pilot Project in Paediatric Surgery.
In the areas of research and education, Dr. Nicola Jones was awarded the Shwachman Award, an international award from the North American Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (given by North American Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition to a person who has made major, lifelong scientific or educational contributions to the field of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology or nutrition in North America).
