Message from the Vice Dean of Medical Education
Welcome to the 2024-2025 annual report for the Office of the Vice Dean, Medical Education. This series of reports highlights selected innovations and achievements in and across the MD Program, Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME), Continuing Professional Development (CPD), and Integrated Physician Scientist Training Program (IPSTP). It also includes a message from the Associate Dean, Learner Affairs.
We launched the inaugural Medical Education Strategic Plan in June 2023. Organized according to three overarching strategic priorities, our strategic plan identifies nine strategic initiatives focused on opportunities for alignment, integration or harmonization as well as corresponding strategic actions. Thanks to the ongoing, collaborative efforts of education leaders and administrative staff across the medical education portfolio, we have made a great deal of progress towards achievement of the initiatives and actions identified in our plan.
The initiatives and actions identified in our strategic plan do not represent the full scope of the portfolio, including the many day-to-day activities that that are directly and indirectly essential to our shared education mission. Rather, our plan was designed to identify and provide direction for specific priorities.
One such priority is the transition from outdated legacy systems and fragmented IT infrastructure to a consolidated learning management system. Since 2022, a steering committee and supporting teams have been working to bring that vision into focus. Following a rigorous RFP process and extensive negotiations, we have started work with LGI Healthcare Solutions to transition to a new learning management system for the MD Program and PGME, with implementation planned for mid-2026.
A project team of skilled and knowledgeable staff from the MD Program, PGME and MedIT has been assembled to lead implementation of this new learning management system in partnership with LGI. That partnership with LGI is just one of the many partnerships integral to this transformational change. Our team and LGI are committed to working in close collaboration with the many communities both within Temerty Medicine and at our partner hospitals to transition from the current legacy systems to a new, fully integrated system that enables core and ancillary functions of medical education while optimizing the user experience, training outcomes, operational efficiency and facilitating the collection of data to inform ongoing quality assurance and reporting.
Another priority for the medical education portfolio is the expansion and effective distribution of our education programs, including to the Scarborough campus as part of the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health (SAMIH). While medical education is essential to SAMIH, SAMIH is not just medical education. That said, the establishment of SAMIH includes two components that are of particular importance to the Medical Education portfolio. First, along with SAMIH, we will establish the Scarborough Academy of Medicine (SAM), the MD Program’s fifth academy. Second, we are expanding postgraduate medical education across the GTA, with a primary focus on Scarborough and Mississauga.
We are committed to working as collaborative leaders and partners with other decanal portfolios, departments, offices, and our hospital affiliates to promote, advance and support this expansion of our education programs. This commitment includes providing faculty development, both specific to SAMIH and, more generally, to continue to enable and support innovative approaches to teaching and learning at all three University of Toronto campuses and within our hospital partners.
I would like to thank all members of the medical education community for showing me what is possible, and demonstrating over and over again that by working together we can achieve the kind of success that makes Temerty Medicine a recognized and progressive leader in medical education.
Patricia Houston
Vice Dean Medical Education
Temerty Faculty of Medicine
2024-2025 Updates
Acknowledgements
Thank you to all those who contributed to the content and design of this year’s report – Caroline Abrahams, Mark Bennett, David Chan, Lisa Chinchami, Christopher Chipman, Trevor Cuddy, Adrienne Fung, Meredith Giuliani, Shawn Healy, Samantha Inwood, Julie Johnstone, Nicola Jones, Melissa Kennedy Hynes, Marcus Law, Anne Matlow, Chelsea Matson, Andrea McCart, Andrew McLeod, Anne McLeod, Heather McDonald-Blumer, Arlene McKinley, Lynsey Mellon, Stephanie Mooney, Laura Leigh Murgaski, Kim O'Hearn, James Owen, Morag Paton, Antonio Pignatiello, David Rojas, Emma Sanchez-Swaren, Suzan Schneeweiss, Laura Simone, Paul Tonin, Catharine Walsh and Mary-Kay Whittaker.
And thank you to all members of the medical education community who contribute to the continued success of the MD Program, PGME, CPD, and IPSTP both as individual programs and as partners in the continuum of medical education.