Joan Binnendyk awarded Best "What Works" Paper at ICRE

Over the past two years, Joan Binnendyk, educational developer, Postgraduate Medical Education, and Dr. Christopher Watling, associate dean, Postgraduate Medical Education, have been developing a creative and effective Transition to Residency (T2R) program.

Launched in 2013, the T2R program includes a series of workshops that are delivered to PGY1s throughout July and August to help facilitate the challenging move from medical school to residency. The workshops were also livestreamed and included technology such as Poll Everywhere, Kahoot and Twitter to enhance interactivity and engagement.

Binnendyk recently gave a presentation on this program entitled “CanMEDS in Context: Engaging Residents in a Transition to Residency Program” at the International Conference on Residency Education (ICRE) in Toronto. She received the award for Best “What Works” Paper.

At ICRE, “What Works” is a popular and well-subscribed category of presentation that focuses on scholarly innovation in medical education. This year, there were more than 100 entries.

“Joan embraced and ran with this vision to create a program that has exceeded my expectations and is now receiving national and international attention,” Dr. Watling said. “We in the Postgraduate Medical education office are extremely proud of this work, which reflects a philosophy of innovation and scholarship.”

Binnendyk added that while she was extremely pleased to be recognized at ICRE, receiving this award wasn’t “one person’s win.”

“A project of this size is definitely a team effort,” she said. “It is gratifying to know that the time and effort we all put into T2R not only helped ease the transition of our learners from medical school to residency, but also attracted the attention of colleagues throughout Canada.”

The T2R 2015 iteration will address resident feedback from this year. Binnendyk explained they hope to create a T2R reference guide that contains salient points from each of the eight workshops. Additionally, they are interested in exploring the further development of a social media component.