2022 DFCM Award of Excellence Winners

Congratulations to all our 2022 Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) Program Award winners! At this year's virtual Awards & Celebration Event on Sept. 20, we will recognize and honour your contributions to your patients, communities and our department.

These awards relate to the period June 2021 – June 2022.

Academic Family Physician of the Year

Dr. Karen Weyman | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Weyman has been passionate about medical education throughout her impressive career as a family physician, patient advocate, and extraordinary departmental leader at St. Michael’s Hospital. Karen leads and role models by doing; with learners, physicians and health care professionals from all disciplines. Research, quality improvement, education scholarship and leadership also figure prominently in Karen’s repertoire. All of Karen’s activities are firmly grounded in her commitment to equity and justice.

Education Scholarship Excellence Award - Newly Engaged Clinician Educator Scholar

Dr. Lindsay Herzog | Mount Sinai Hospital
Dr. Lindsay Herzog is an emerging star in our department. She has shown remarkable leadership, productivity, and unwavering commitment to education scholarship and to advocating for non-dominant ways of knowing in education. This is grounded in her desire to inspire and motivate learners to provide compassionate care. Lindsay’s scholarly approach to teaching, leadership and curriculum development is an asset to the DFCM and UofT and will surely lead to meaningful change in family medicine education.

Education Scholarship Excellence Award - Senior Clinician Educator Scholar

Dr. Milena Forte | Mount Sinai Hospital
As Education Scholarship Lead and Maternal Education Lead for the DFCM Postgraduate Education Program, Dr. Milena Forte has advanced education scholarship locally and nationally. She is an exemplary coach, mentor, collaborator, and leader. She supports others in developing their programs of scholarly work while also leading her own internationally recognized program of work. Milena’s thoughtful and meaningful scholarship positions her as a leader in family medicine education who can influence ideas and affect practical change.

Education Scholarship Excellence Award - Senior Education Scientist

Dr. Fok-Han Leung | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Fok-Han is an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and he teaches medical students, residents and international graduates. The focus of his education scholarship has been teaching and mentoring learners. Working with numerous research students each year, he has published multiple journal articles and presented at international conferences where students have been highlighted as first authors.

Excellence in Course/Program Development (Fully-Affiliated and Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Nadine Gebara | UHN – Toronto Western Hospital – Division of Palliative Care
This team is to be commended on their very deliberate and thorough approach to the development of Grand Rounds for our division. They grounded rounds in the DPC’s Strategic Plan and completed a needs assessment of DPC members to determine the areas of interest to the larger group. This dedicated group has taken on multiple best practices as it pertains to developing an educational program and the DPC has been enriched by it.

Dr. Naheed Dosani | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital – Division of Palliative Care
This team is to be commended on their very deliberate and thorough approach to the development of Grand Rounds for our division. They grounded rounds in the DPC’s Strategic Plan and completed a needs assessment of DPC members to determine the areas of interest to the larger group. This dedicated group has taken on multiple best practices as it pertains to developing an educational program and the DPC has been enriched by it.

Dr. Adrianne Lebner | Southlake Regional Health Centre – Division of Palliative Care
This team is to be commended on their very deliberate and thorough approach to the development of Grand Rounds for our division. They grounded rounds in the DPC’s Strategic Plan and completed a needs assessment of DPC members to determine the areas of interest to the larger group. This dedicated group has taken on multiple best practices as it pertains to developing an educational program and the DPC has been enriched by it.

Excellence in Course/Program Development (HPE, Fully-Affiliated)

Ms. Lauren Scott | Women's College Hospital
The WCH Nurse Practitioner (NP) led women’s procedure clinic provides a valuable service to patients but is also an exceptional teaching clinic for undergraduate and post-graduate medical learners. The NP team provides highly valued instruction and opportunities for learners to practice sensitive clinical skills which can be difficult to develop proficiency in. Learners love it. The clinic also role models healthy interprofessional relationships for learners, supporting them in becoming effective interprofessional team members.

Ms. Jessica Bawden | Women's College Hospital
The WCH Nurse Practitioner (NP) led women’s procedure clinic provides a valuable service to patients but is also an exceptional teaching clinic for undergraduate and post-graduate medical learners. The NP team provides highly valued instruction and opportunities for learners to practice sensitive clinical skills which can be difficult to develop proficiency in. Learners love it. The clinic also role models healthy interprofessional relationships for learners, supporting them in becoming effective interprofessional team members.

Ms. Courtney May | Women's College Hospital
The WCH Nurse Practitioner (NP) led women’s procedure clinic provides a valuable service to patients but is also an exceptional teaching clinic for undergraduate and post-graduate medical learners. The NP team provides highly valued instruction and opportunities for learners to practice sensitive clinical skills which can be difficult to develop proficiency in. Learners love it. The clinic also role models healthy interprofessional relationships for learners, supporting them in becoming effective interprofessional team members.

Excellence in Creative Professional Activity (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Allan Grill | Markham Stoufville Hospital
Through his leadership roles, Dr. Allan Grill has demonstrated creative excellence in communications media and contributed to the development of Family Medicine professional practice during the pandemic. He participated in numerous media interviews, and created and hosted accredited webinars for the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and collaborated with Choosing Wisely Canada to create "The Cold Standard" toolkit to limit unnecessary antibiotic use for respiratory tract infections in the context of COVID-19 and virtual care.

Excellence in Creative Professional Activity (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Sheila Wijayasinghe | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Wijayasinghe’s contribution to professional innovation and creative excellence are many and highlighted by her involvement in the Pandemic Pregnancy Guide, an evidence-based resource reaching over 43,000 individuals; publishing a children’s book Once Upon a Pandemic with all proceeds being donated to the Red Door Shelter; and her media presence as a regular health expert on CTV The Social and health columnist for the Globe and Mail and Huff Post. In all Sheila does, she focuses on creative ways to improve access to primary health care and is an exemplary role model.

Excellence in Development and Use of Innovative Instructional Methods (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Nadine Gebara | UHN – Toronto Western Hospital – Division of Palliative Care|
Palliative Care ECHO Project: Community-Based Primary Care Community of Practice Series, PalliumCanada, CME with 11 MainPro+ credits with CCFP. Launched in February 2022, this national ECHO Series will support primary care clinicians to integrate primary palliative care in their practices. This community of practice is geared towards any primary health care provider (e.g., physician, nurse, allied health professional and their learners). Co-leads: Drs. Haley Draper and Nadine Gebara

Dr. Haley Draper | UHN – Toronto Western Hospital – Division of Palliative Care
Palliative Care ECHO Project: Community-Based Primary Care Community of Practice Series,PalliumCanada, CME with 11 MainPro+ credits with CCFP. Launched in February 2022, this national ECHO Series will support primary care clinicians to integrate primary palliative care in their practices. This community of practice is geared towards any primary health care provider (e.g., physician, nurse, allied health professional and their learners). Co-leads: Drs. Haley Draper and Nadine Gebara

Excellence in Faculty Development (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Carrie Schram | Women's College Hospital
In her role as FD Lead for WCH Family Practice, Dr. Schram has tirelessly supported her colleagues through junior promotion, awards nomination and in maintaining their continuing medical education through regular rounds, joint round with Medicine and larger educational events. She was integral in preparing us for accreditation and helped us move through the process with confidence. Dr. Schram goes above and beyond for her colleagues, being readily available to provide mentorship and support.

Excellence in Faculty Development (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Susan Goldstein | Mount Sinai Hospital
Dr. Susan Goldstein has been a vital voice of advocacy for community based academic docs through her role as a FMLE Director, Inaugural Faculty Development Lead on the DFCM undergraduate education committee and Faculty Development committees. Her devotion in nurturing, advocating and academically inspiring community docs is legendary. Her tireless work and legacy includes creating a standardized Faculty Development manual, a Speakers bureau and pivoting to virtual supervision.

Excellence in Leadership (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Monica Nijhawan | Southlake Regional Health Centre
Dr. Nijhawan’s leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic in her role as site Program Director has contributed to our learners’ excellent academic, learning and teaching experience. Her dedication to the teaching program, her excellent collaboration with the Family Health Team and her leadership skills allowed our learners to have uninterrupted virtual and in person clinical learning. She has adapted her leadership style to the needs of our learners and she has very successfully lead our site through the accreditation process.

Excellence in Leadership (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Abbas Ghavam-Rassoul | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Abbas’ leadership has been woven in the richness of our Department for nearly two decades, much to the benefit of our learners and colleagues in Toronto, in Canada and abroad. Of all the leaders I have been privileged to work with and learn from over nearly three decades as an academic leader, Abbas stands in a category by himself as a thoughtful, committed, effective  and caring leader, as humble and discreet as he is talented. His collaborative, relationship-focused, and good-humoured approach to leadership has enabled him to make a positive impact on those he leads and the colleagues who work together with him. He has done an outstanding job at effectively leading several complex programs at SMH and the UofT DFCM.

Excellence in Leadership (HPE, Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Deborah Kopansky-Giles | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Deborah is a highly respected and accomplished leader who has worked tirelessly in her career to enhance people-centred, interprofessional and collaborative practice, and more recently, to better integrate Health Professional Educators (HPE) into Family Medicine Education across Canada. She has a tremendous ability to strategically and respectfully bring people together under a shared vision and to draw on a diversity of strengths to achieve innovative deliverables. Moreover, she approaches all of this with an intentional scholarly lens, so that others can learn from and build upon her work towards system improvement.

Excellence in New Leadership (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Casimir Soare | Unity Health Toronto – St. Joseph's Health Centre
Over the past 7-8years of holding leadership roles at St. Joe’s, Dr. Soare leads by example. He is ethical, dedicated, compassionate, innovative, and creative. He creates a culture of psychological safety for those he works with. He is extremely deserving of the DFCM Excellence in New Leadership Award.

Excellence in New Leadership (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Praseedha Janakiram | Women's College Hospital
Dr. Janakiram has been a stellar leader, leading the Global Health PGY-3 Program, The Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration in Family Medicine, leading clinical and research projects at the Crossroads clinic, Interim Vice Chair Global Health and Social Accountability. She has stepped into these roles with humility and a spirit of collaboration and advanced projects that have had significant impact locally and globally.

Excellence in Social Responsibility (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Melanie Henry | Markham Stouffville Hospital
Dr. Melanie Henry is a remarkable family physician whose commitment to social responsibility is inspirational to all those who have the privilege of working with her. Her work as the Global Health and Social Accountability lead for Markham Stouffville has allowed the program to grow and thrive despite the limitations of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, her passionate commitment to a wide variety of community projects such as the Black Health Vaccine Initiative and Outreach Primary Care with the Blue Door Shelter have made a significant impact both within York Region and beyond.

Excellence in Social Responsibility (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Jennifer Hulme | UHN – Toronto General Hospital – Division of Emergency Medicine
Dr. Jennifer Hulme is a dedicated family and emergency physician who is wholly focused on addressing the priority health concerns of our community through clinical practice, teaching, leadership, and program of health equity research. She leads health equity innovations in the emergency department, including prescription cellular phones, rapid HIV screening, and community collaborations to introduce Peer Support workers. She helped steward our community throughout COVID-19 as Medical Director for The COVID Recovery Site for People Experiencing Homelessness, and continues to model social responsibility in practice.

Excellence in Teaching (Early Career) (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Azarm Golian | North York General Hospital
Dr. Golian is an exceptional teacher with special attention to her learners needs. She always sets time aside to explore their learning needs and then tailors their clinical experience to meet both the perceived and unperceived needs. Her teaching style is amicable and thought provoking. She serves as an effective role model of teaching and clinical excellence. She is viewed as a mentor by her learners and as an exemplary teacher by her peers.

Excellence in Teaching (Early Career) (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Kathryn Dorman | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Dorman is a passionate physician who excels in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students. Her full scope approach to family medicine, with a focus on complex and marginalized patients, serves as a foundation for her teachings of the complex interplay between physical health and social determinants. Students remark that they aspire to be like Dr. Dorman and look up to her for her excellence in teaching as well as her kindness, empathy and commitment to patients, which is unparalleled.

Louise Nasmith Award

Dr. Hasan Sheikh | UHN – Toronto General Hospital – Division of Emergency Medicine
Dr. Sheikh is an emergency and addictions physician and holds a Masters in Public Administration. He believes that many of our most frustrating cases are actually symptoms of an upstream public policy failure. He hopes to use the Louise Nasmith Award to develop a framework that family and emergency physicians can apply to challenging interactions to diagnose pathology in our public policies, and advocate for their change.

Outstanding Contribution to Family Medicine Research

Dr. Karen Tu | North York General Hospital
Dr. Tu is a Research Scientist at NYGH, with a cross-appointment in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at UofT and a staff family physician at the UHN-TWH Family Health Team. She is the founder of the Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database (EMRALD). She has extensive experience with primary care EMR data, administrative data and the validation of administrative data and EMR data algorithms for the identification of common chronic diseases.

Pandemic Pivot Award - Staff Impact Award, Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Mr. Brian Da Silva | DFCM Central
This award is for an individual or team that launched a new initiative and/or process aimed at addressing the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brian, DFCM’s eLearning Design and Development Analyst, was nominated for this award because of his outstanding contributions supporting the transition to virtual learning and working: He assisted the Virtual Care Competency Training Roadmap (ViCCTR) team in developing online resources to pivot towards virtual education and training in the family medicine residency. Throughout the enormous upheaval in our workplaces, Brian has worked tirelessly with our faculty and staff members to ensure that their work can continue, and has done so while maintaining his unflappable good nature and a calm, cheerful attitude during stressful technology situations.

Philip Ellison Excellence in Continuing Professional Development

Dr. Meeta Patel | North York General Hospital – Division of Emergency Medicine
Dr. Meeta Patel practices Emergency Medicine at North York General Hospital, is the Faculty Development Co-Lead for the Division of Emergency Medicine, and is an Assistant Professor in the DFCM. Her CPD interests currently lie in raising awareness, disseminating knowledge, and improving communication skills for clinicians in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). She intends to use the award to broadly disseminate a physician communication tool and deliver a communication skills interactive workshop to help put learned skills into action.

Quality Improvement Award of Excellence (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Martin Chasen and the William Osler Palliative Care Team | William Osler Health System – Division of Palliative Care
The palliative care team at William Osler is to be commended for its multi-pronged and multi-year approach to improving clinical palliative for patients across disease trajectories and care settings. The team has worked on optimization of hospital discharge to ensure better continuity of care, improve patient satisfaction and decreased readmission rates. This excellence in quality improvement was especially exemplified by the team’s efforts during COVID-19 to help improve collaboration across departments.

Research Excellence - New Investigator

Dr. Catherine Ji | UHN – Toronto Western Hospital
In only three years as staff clinician-investigator at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, UHN, Dr. Catherine Ji has exhibited early success in her chosen area of research of the systemic disparities in primary preventative care and health services. Between 2020-2022, she has been principal investigator on five peer-reviewed grants and co-investigator on three other grants in that same time period, for a combined total of over $700,000 in primary care research funding.

Research Excellence - Senior Investigator

Dr. Tara Kiran | Unity Health Toronto – St. Michael's Hospital
Dr. Kiran leads an impactful research program on quality improvement in primary care. For example, her research revealed identified gaps in public coverage for home care services that directly influenced Health Quality Ontario’s Quality Standard on the Transition from Hospital to Home. She is a prolific speaker and writer of peer-reviewed papers, letters to the editor, reports, blogs, and opinion pieces. Dr. Kiran is truly an inspirational role model for knowledge building in family medicine.

Staff Excellence (Fully-Affiliated)

Ms. Paula Darocha | Mount Sinai Hospital
Ms. Paula DaRocha has been the Program Assistant at Mount Sinai for sixteen years and over this time she has become a driving force in the residency program. Paula goes above and beyond for Mount Sinai residents routinely and ensures that the program always runs smoothly. Her dedication and commitment to education and learners is integral to the residency experience at Sinai!

Staff Excellence (Community-Affiliated)

Ms. Rhonda Taylor | Southlake Regional Health Centre
Rhonda has been a valuable member of the Southlake site for over a decade. Her dedication to the program, collaboration with faculty, learners, and other sites is evident in how seamlessly the program operates. She always has the learners' best interests at the forefront and has been integral in supporting and leading initiatives at our site. We are truly fortunate to have Rhonda as part fo our team!

Staff Excellence in Collaboration

Ms. Linda Jackson | St. Michael's/St. Joseph's Hospitals
Linda Jackson, the Senior Clinical Director of Primary and Community Care of Unity Health, has developed an extremely strong reputation amongst the community health sector providing care for Toronto’s most vulnerable clients as being a trusted, valued, and respected collaborative leader. The fundamental value she places on the importance of high quality meaningful relationships – through formal organizational partnerships to informal collaboration and professional support for individuals – is truly unparalleled.

Staff Excellence in Leadership Values

Ms. Jennifer Capell | Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Jen started her position as the administration assistant for FM education at Sunnybrook at a very challenging time! She met those challenges with grace, superior organization and an enthusiasm that did not go unnoticed by all. Not only is Jen performing all her expected duties exceptionally well, she is taking on new tasks that go beyond anyone’s expectations including being a Peer Support and demonstrating a keen interest in Social Accountability, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging.

Staff New Employee Award

Ms. Alicia Fung | DFCM Central
Alicia is an integral part of the DFCM Central communications team, providing fast, efficient and high-quality design, communications and administrative support to a wide range of DFCM projects and programs including the DFCM Conference, Confused About COVID infographic series (viewed over 35,000 times in the first month) and the Docs4Docs initiative. The quality of her work and collaborative ‘can-do’ approach make her a highly sought-after team member.

Sustained Excellence in Teaching (Community-Affiliated)

Dr. Sharonie Valin | North York General Hospital
Sharonie Valin is one of those teachers that you never forget. She is warm, genuine, honest and dedicated. She has taught hundreds of learners during her career, and undoubtedly, has left a unique and lasting impact on each one of them. She goes above and beyond to ensure each learner has their needs fully met. She is committed to their clinical excellence, personal well-being, and enthusiasm for Family Medicine. Way to go, Sharonie!

Sustained Excellence in Teaching (Fully-Affiliated)

Dr. Claire Murphy | Women's College Hospital
Dr. Murphy has been an exceptional teacher at WCH Family Practice since 1995. Dr. Murphy is highly valued by learners as a knowledgeable, caring teacher who provides constructive feedback and is willing to have hard conversations. Dr. Muprhy supports her learners as physicians and people who at times face challenges with racism and micro-aggressions. For her dedication to teaching and willingness to always go the extra mile, Dr. Murphy is most deserving of this award.