Emergency Medicine: Outstanding Clinical Teaching Award

• Purpose
• Current Recipient
• Nomination Process
• Past Recipients

Purpose

The purpose of this award is to recognize outstanding clinical ("bedside") teaching during the previous academic year. The nomination process is facilitated by the outgoing chief of the RCPC-EM resident. Nominees will demonstrate:

• high clinical and education standards;
• the ability to enhance learning;
• the ability to stimulate critical thinking and inquiry;
• role-modeling; and
• enthusiasm for learning in emergency medicine.

Current Recipient

Dr Kaif Pardhan

The following is an excerpt from the nomination letter put forth on Dr Pardhan's behalf:

It is with great pleasure that I nominate Dr. Kaif Pardhan, Emergency Medicine Physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Division of Emergency Medicine Faculty Member, for the Outstanding Clinical Teacher Award.

Dr. Pardhan has had an immediate impact on his trainees since becoming a staff physician. He creates a safe and supportive clinical environment while pushing his residents to be independent and effective clinicians. From the outside of each shift, he asks for trainee’s specific goals and objectives and offers the opportunity to teach on a specific topic of interest. He then follows up at the end of each shift with probing questions about key learning points, areas for further development, and considerations for the next shift together. This commitment to personalized learning is laudable.

His teaching style is best articulated as a coaching style. He provides the learner with ample space to demonstrate his/her skills across all CanMEDS competencies and interjects with helpful clinical pearls at just the right time. These interjections are skillfully placed when there may be a gap in knowledge or to push the resident to a higher level of understanding in preparation for independent practice.

In addition to his bedside teaching, he makes a significant contribution to our academic rounds through formal presentations in which he always goes the extra mile to prepare sessions which are engaging, case-based, and clinically-relevant. His commitment to be a top-tier clinician teacher is evident in all his interactions with the residency program.

Dr. Pardhan exemplifies all the key attributes of an outstanding clinician teacher. He demonstrates high clinical and education standards, enhances the learning experience by creating a safe learning environment, stimulates critical thinking and inquiry, serves as an effective role model, and shares his enthusiasm for learning in emergency medicine.

Dr. Pardhan is most deserving of this award

Previous Recipient

Robert Simard is an emergency physician who has interests in medical education, point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), and advanced life support (ALS). He completed a Bachelor of Science with honours in his home-town of Sudbury at Laurentian University in the chemistry and biochemistry program. With his body unsuitable for mining or farming, he went on to complete medical school at the University of Ottawa. During his residency in the Royal College emergency medicine program at the University of Toronto, he completed a POCUS fellowship at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. He is currently enrolled in a Master's of Medical Education (MMEd) at the University of Dundee. He has interests in curriculum development and has created the STAR (Shock, Trauma, and Resuscitation) ultrasound course to complement the trauma courses at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Rob is also a master instructor for both the EDE1 and EDE2 courses that teach POCUS to emergency physicians across the country and is currently the director of ultrasound for the University of Toronto’s Royal College emergency medicine core ultrasound program. He enjoys teaching weekend PALS and ACLS courses for the Sunnybrook ALS program. He has presented his research at national conferences and his research interests include resuscitation POCUS, efficient and effective teaching methods, and quality assurance. In his leisure time, Rob is a baseball fanatic, and can be found cheering for his beloved Toronto Blue Jays. He is an avid fisherman and one day dreams of owning a boat of his own to fish on Manitoulin Island where he spends his summer camping.

Nomination Process

1. The nomination process is facilitated by the chief RCPC-EM resident(s).
2. A call for nominations is to be circulated to all current RCPC-EM residents eight weeks prior to Resident Academic Day.
3. Nominations are accepted from current RCPC-EM residents.
4. A nomination letter of 250-500 words, detailing the outstanding clinical teaching ability of the nominee, must be submitted to the chief RCPC-EM resident(s) six weeks prior to Resident Academic Day.
5. All nomination letters are circulated to the current RCPC-EM residents two weeks prior to the award selection.
6. Selection of the award recipient is made four weeks prior to Resident Academic Day. Two-thirds of the current RCPC-EM residents must be in attendance. A 75% majority vote is required.  

Criteria

Nominees must have an academic appointment in one of the three divisions of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto.
The award recipient can only receive this award once every five years.

Award

1. All nominees will receive a copy of their nomination letter.
2. The Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine, will be provided with a copy of all nomination letters.
3. The award recipient will be presented with a plaque, funded by the Division of Emergency Medicine, by the chief RCPC-EM resident(s), at the Resident Academic Day.

Past Recipients

Back to Division of Emergency Medicine