Jul 21, 2017

ENDONews – A Word From the DDD

Endocrinology & Metabolism

Dr. Jacqueline James

Welcome to the first edition of our newly reformatted EndoNews, our Endocrinology and Metabolism Division periodic newsletter. I am grateful for the opportunity to take over the reins of the leadership of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, at the University of Toronto, from Dr. Gary Lewis who was in the role since 2008. Gary did an amazing job, leading the division through a phase of expansion in terms of faculty recruitment, metabolic research initiatives and growth, and the birth of the quality and innovation stream for academic physicians. Fourteen full-time faculty members were appointed during his tenure, including four clinical-scientists, one clinician-educator, six clinician-teachers, and three quality and innovation clinicians. As of June 30, we numbered 75 clinical academic faculty, which includes 48 full-time and 27 adjunct/part-time clinicians in our community of endocrinology sites in the GTA. In addition, there are 10 faculty members cross-appointed and eight professors emeriti, and three new recruits who will start officially this academic year. This means that there is one incredibly solid group of wonderful colleagues for me to work with and for, who have a wide range of academic and clinical strengths and expertise.

I would like to thank Gary for his vision, hard work, enthusiasm and support for our division and for me personally over the past several years. In the past month, as I have transitioned into the role, I have begun the process of getting to know the division leaders at each of hospital sites and my fellow colleagues better. In reviewing their contributions and roles within the division, I feel even more privileged to have been given the task of Departmental Division Director (DDD) to be able to represent them at the broader university table.

My first task as DDD is to discover how best to serve the academic needs of our community of endocrinologists and our associated scientists, and the clinical needs of our patients in the broader community. An important principle the Department of Medicine has adopted is to ensure that the perspectives and experiences of our patients and their families drive our work. This means that in addition to continuing to build on the basic and clinical research agendas, and providing outstanding training for the next generation of clinicians, our division will be seeking ways of improving collaboration across our sites to better provide patient-focused care. Over the next few months, we will be embarking on a process to collectively discuss and decide how best to steer our efforts, affectionately (or un- affectionately) known, as strategic planning. I recognize that planning needs to be organized and cannot occur without input from division members, so I will ask members to enjoy (or tolerate!) the process.

Starting in early fall, and hopefully complete over the winter, we will have our collective long-term plan in place. I have several ideas and priorities that will be vetted in the process and of course will be soliciting colleagues’ ideas and commitment so that we may embark on a plan that is both inspirational and achievable. We have truly world class research programs in diabetes and metabolism. The most challenging of our needs as a division at present is to build our endocrine and endocrine oncology research programs over the next several years. With wise heads, willing hearts, excellent collaboration and some solid resources – we can do it!

Our leadership team for our university-wide educational programming for this year includes: Dr. Jeremy Gilbert - Program Director of our Endocrinology Subspecialty Residency Training Program, Dr. Maria Wolfs coordinates the Academic Half Day, Dr. George Fantus coordinates City-Wide Endocrine Rounds, Dr. Shoba Kumar organizes Faculty Development Day. And our new program administrator is Maria Bridgemohan.

As we haven’t published in a few months, we have lots to share, please enjoy EndoNews. We are trying some new things, so let us know how we can improve.

Return to ENDOnews - July 2017