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22 | S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 North of the border "GOOD DOCTORS AREN'T AUTOMATICALLY good teachers," says Salvatore Spadafora, MD, MHPE '01, a graduate of the COM's master of health professions education (MHPE) program designed to develop educational leaders. Currently the vice dean of postgraduate medical education and continuing professional development at the University of Toronto, Spadafora came to this realization as a young anesthesiology resident at the University of Western Ontario in his native Canada. Although his specialty training would prepare him well for clinical practice, he felt his own residency experience cried out for more structure in terms of formal teaching training. "It could be hit or miss, what you learned," he recalls of his time as a trainee. "While the 'see one, do one, teach one' method is still applicable in medicine, you can also get formal training to become a better teacher and improve on what you see is lacking in medical education." With that in mind, Spadafora enrolled in COM's master's program as soon as he completed residency training in 1995. He soon acquired the modern educational methodology tools he was seeking to become a better medical educator. Thinking he would help enhance the education system on a sporadic basis while providing care as a small-town doctor, he quickly found his COM education and the MHPE's global reputation propelling him toward a more influential leadership path. Spadafora started down this road by serving as program director of Western Ontario's anesthesia and family-medicine anesthesia residency programs in 2002 and then, six years later, becoming associate dean of postgraduate medical education for the university's Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. Today, as a leading medical educator at one of Canada's oldest and most esteemed medical schools, Spadafora oversees the education and training of 3,600 medical residents and fellows. With the added responsibility and oversight of continuing medical education conferences and programs, he also ensures the lifelong education of some 42,000 additional learners attracted to the University of Toronto's CME offerings. Applying his knowledge from the COM to benefit patients in Canada's single-payer system, Spadafora has worked to integrate education in urban and community sites and develop models of interprofessional education. He credits his training at UIC for his upward career trajectory. "The brand of the master's program gave me instant credibility as a medical educator," he says. "While I worked hard, no doubt my rigorous training afforded me many opportunities that have put me in the position I am in today." Ensuring quality education ACHIEVING AND MAINTAINING ACCREDITATION status plays a significant role in motivating medical colleges to meet quality standards. Yet the precise impact of accreditation on the quality of medical education remained relatively amorphous until Danielle Blouin, MD, MHPE '03, PhD '16, professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and in the Faculty of Education at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, made it the core of her research. The first graduate of COM's collaborative doctoral program in health professions education and curriculum studies with the University of Illinois College of Education, this Canadian emergency medicine physician wrote her thesis on the influence of accreditation processes on the culture of quality improvement in Canadian medical schools. "There was no scholarly work on the subject when I started my graduate studies in 2013," says Blouin, who at the time had just taken a post as assistant secretary of the Committee for the Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools and the Committee on Accreditation of Continuing Medical Education in Canada. "It gave me a niche." In 2014, Blouin was tapped to head both key organizations charged with ensuring the quality and integrity of medical school programs across Canada via rigorous monitoring and review. In addition to her leadership responsibilities, she continues to build on the research she launched at the COM. "I am still writing papers based on the novel ideas generated during my PhD studies," Blouin says. A globally renowned scholar, she remains focused on program evaluation as it relates to accreditation. Her current work involves defining and assessing markers of quality in medical education to better connect the dots between accreditation status and the ability to educate high-performing future physicians. The Department of Medical Education remains the oldest department 1959 George E. Miller, MD, founded COM Office of Research in Medical Education (which later became the department of medical education) Danielle Blouin Salvatore Spadafora 2015 Executive Masters of Healthcare Administration (EMHA) program established at UIC