Dr. W. Dale Dauphinee Award for Excellence in Medical Education

About the award

The Dr. W. Dale Dauphinee Award for Excellence in Medical Education was named in recognition of Dr. Dauphinee’s many years of service as the executive director and registrar.

It is awarded annually to one medical student and one resident who have demonstrated excellence in medical education within the schools of medicine in Canada. Each recipient will be awarded $5,000 to be used for studies, books, or e-learning tools, and/or conference attendance.

Definition of excellence in medical education

Dr. Dauphinee was amongst the innovators and leaders at the Medical Council of Canada (MCC) from 1971 to 2006. As an agent of change in both educational practices and performance assessment, he promoted and guided the modernization of national assessment practices. An innovator in academia and in regulation, he led the introduction of new technologies and assessment strategies and worked across borders and disciplines to build new alliances and venues in regulation and the evaluation of physician performance. To honour his example, this award should confer recognition on individuals whose actions and accomplishments reflect the attitudes and values that have kept the MCC at the front of incremental change and quality improvement and to remain relevant to its public mandate.

Within this overall context, to qualify for the Dr. W. Dale Dauphinee Award for Excellence in Medical Education, a nominee should have made significant contributions to the betterment and accessibility of medical education and/or assessment practices through innovation within their faculty or between faculties within the health disciplines. Areas of interest could include:

• Developing innovative educational or assessment tools at undergraduate or postgraduate levels
• Improving accessibility of assessment tools through the use of technology in changing times
• Assessing the validity of artificial intelligence tools in learning or quality of care
• Initiating innovative qualitative and quantitative measures of performance
• Initiating an innovative process for virtual and/or continuing learning in practice
• Piloting and demonstrating clinical effect for new technologies
• Demonstrating peer feedback for improving clinical performance and/or for learning
• Creating collaborative alliances to improve assessment
• Improving assessment of inter-professional and/or team performance

Nomination process

Each school of medicine is asked to submit formal letters of nomination outlining how a trainee has demonstrated excellence in medical education during their training and why they should be considered.

Each school can only nominate one medical student and one resident for this award, for a total of two nominations. As such, we encourage each school to discuss the nominations internally.

The letter of nomination can come from the dean, associate/vice-deans of undergraduate or postgraduate Medical Education, program director and/or faculty member. The nominee’s curriculum vitae is also required and must be formatted in 11-point font or larger and should not exceed three pages in length.

Deadline: The letters of nomination must be submitted electronically to [email protected] no later than April 30 of the current year.