Staying in Motion with Continuing Professional Development
It’s fair to say that in this day and age, if you’re standing still you will get left behind.
The importance of continuing professional development cannot be underestimated – it ensures that your knowledge and professional skills are current and relevant. This proves to be especially true within Schulich Medicine & Dentistry’s rapidly advancing and fast paced environment.
The Continuing Professional Development department is comprised of 14 members who support various program streams, including Continuing Medical Education, Continuing Dental Education and Faculty and Staff Development. The team is focused on helping people move forward with their professional development and learning.
Supporting more than 25,000 professional learners doesn’t come without hurdles.
“An ongoing challenge is identifying and developing workshops, which meet the current educational needs and interests of our professionals. We strive to find more innovative ways to engage learners in the workshops being offered,” explained Jason Eadie, CPD manager.
Each semester, CPD offers workshops that cover a variety of subject matter which reflects the needs of faculty, staff and residents. Programs that focus on areas such as teaching, leadership, research, library skills, computer technology, and management are readily available.
CPD also collaborates with the Windsor Program to provide courses to faculty members located at the Windsor Campus. They make excellent use of videoconferencing technology for many of these workshops.
Specifically for residents, CPD offers “Hot Topics in Postgraduate Education”. This is a series of interactive, discussion-based workshops that focus on various topics of interest to residents.
The department is proud of what they can offer the School, and they work tirelessly to provide innovative and refreshed programs for everyone that they serve.
“In Fall 2012, CPD launched the Faculty Development Teaching Certificate. It offers a variety of practical workshops designed to cultivate and enhance curriculum development and mentoring skills for medical educators,” said Eadie.
The department is also excited about their newest program offering – IDEAS Introductory Quality Improvement Program. CPD is one of seven university partners in Ontario offering Introductory QI Programs to health care professionals and managers interested in enhancing their QI knowledge and skills.
The department helps strengthen their team by participating a number of social activities together.
But the connection that really ties this team together is their desire to strengthen and continuously improve the professional development within our School.
Their willingness to help identify the development needs of departments, units and individuals will keep the School moving forward for many years to come.
