Research Program Overview
The FSG Medical Education Research program is grounded in the foundational idea that education matters. From this perspective, the FSG Med Ed Lab pursues studies that aim to emphasize, elucidate, and improve the relationship between health professional training and the healthcare delivered to patients and communities. FSG stands for full-scope generalist. We take on this moniker for two reasons. First, situated in a Department of Family Medicine, much of our research considers the education antecedents that support the effective practice of comprehensive, continuous, and community-adaptive primary care family medicine. Secondly, given the breadth of education issues in the health professions, we recognize a need to embrace generalism in our approach to research inquiry, adopting a pragmatic epistemological lens and developing collective expertise in a wide range of research methods, methodologies, and designs.
Research Program Pillars
Education for Family Medicine
Investigations of education policies and practices for improving access and delivery of comprehensive primary care family medicine.
Conceptualizing Merit
Research on the relationships between admissions policies, programmatic assessment, the outcomes of training, and conceptualizations of merit in health professional training
Bigger Education Data
Work that explores and enhances our collective capacity for inter-institutional data-driven medical education research.
Precision Skill Acquisition
Studies on human motor control and the training, acquisition, and assessment of precision technical skills in medicine and other disciplines.
Projects
Training for Transformation
Investigators: Meredith Vanstone, Lawrence Grierson, David Price, Danielle O’Toole
Program Pillar(s): Education for Family Medicine
Description: The College of Family Physicians of Canada is currently working with multiple partners to co-create a renewed family medicine residency curriculum based on the Outcomes of Training Project recommendations published in January 2022. This project aims to elicit, refine, and test policy options that respond to the education enhancements outlined in the Outcomes of Training Project Report. Deliverables will include a set of policy options, each with associated value propositions, and descriptions of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
Funding: College of Family Physicians of Canada
Grassroots Patient Medical Home Study
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Michelle Howard, David Price, Jose Francois, Alan Katz, Asiana Elma
Program Pillar(s): Education for Family Medicine
Description: There are loud pan-Canadian calls for greater uptake of the Patient’s Medical Home vision for primary care, a set of policy recommendations spanning the implementation of remuneration structures that better incentivize continuity-based and community-adaptive family medicine and increased development of interdisciplinary healthcare teams that support family physicians in caring for more patients across a fuller practice scope. This research focuses on understanding the processes and features that support the grassroots development of family medicine practices that embody key PMH features with the goal of generating evidence that informs prospective advocacy efforts, education reform, and policy decisions
Funding: College of Family Physicians of Canada
Aspiring Physician Research Experience for Medical School Admissions
Investigators: Irene Chang, Laurie Yang, Stacey Ritz, Lawrence Grierson
Program Pillar(s): Conceptualizing Merit
Description: Research experiences are often perceived by aspiring physicians as a way to support their medical school applications; however, the true value of research experiences in admissions is unclear. Through policy analysis and pan-Canadian survey, this study investigates the importance of applicant research experiences and involvement to the Canadian medical school admissions process.
Geographic Disposition of Family Physicians
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Asiana Elma, Monica Aggarwal, Dorothy Bakker, Neil Johnston, Mathew Mercuri, Gina Agarwal
Program Pillars: Education for Family Medicine
Description: Education policies surrounding trainee selection and distributed training sites can be used to influence the distribution of graduating physicians into practice locations that best serve the needs of the population. This study employs retrospective observational and qualitative research designs to investigate the medical education experiences that influence family physicians’ decisions on their practice locations.
Funding: Hamilton Academic Family Medicine Associates Research Grant; Faculty of Health Sciences Education Scholarship Fund
Bias in Medical School Admissions Tools
Investigators: Thuy Anh Ngo, Jason Profetto, Lawrence Grierson, Alexander MacIntosh, Anjali Menezes
Program Pillar(s): Conceptualizing Merit; Bigger Education Data
Description: Merit-based medical admissions may be biased in a way that limits access to medicine for those from equity-seeking groups. This research links diversity data from Altus Assessments Inc. with data from previous admissions cycles at McMaster University in order to highlight the degree that selection tools are mediated by medical student identity features.
Funding: MITACS Accelerate
The Social Innovation of Medical School Admissions
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Kulamakan Kulasegaram, Jean-Michel Leduc, Mark Hanson
Program Pillar(s): Conceptualizing Merit
Description: This research aims to catalogue the admissions adaptations that were considered and employed by medical schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during the initial March 2020 public health emergency, and over subsequent cycles. The goal of the research is the characterize the transformative impacts that these adaptations have had on the Canadian medical school admissions landscape and on aspiring physicians.
Moral Distress in Critical and Primary Care
Investigators: Monica Molinaro, Meredith Vanstone, Myles Leslie, Lawrence Grierson
Program Pillar(s): Education for Family Medicine
Description: This project explores the way moral systems were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that this had on interprofessional teams of health care providers working in critical care and family medicine environments in Ontario and Alberta.
Funding: Canadian Institute of Health Research
Building Consensus and Socializing Values for Medical Education Data Sharing in Canada
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Kulamakan Kulasegaram
Program Pillar(s): Bigger Education Data
Description: This work engages stakeholders and data stewards from across the Canadian medical education community to build consensus about and share widely those values and principles that support the use and sharing of medical education data for the purposes of medical education, health policy, and health services research.
Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Compute Ontario, Digital Research Alliance of Canada
Ontario Medical Schools Outcomes Measures Research Consortium
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Kulamakan Kulasegaram, Saad Chahine, Erin Cameron, Doug Archibald, Peter Wang, Ilona Bartman, Claire Touchie
Program Pillar(s): Conceptualizing Merit; Bigger Education Data
Description: This study represents a collaborative endeavour between medical education researchers from the 6 Ontario medical schools, the Canadian Residency Matching Service (CARMS), and the Medical Council of Canada (MCC), which aims to illuminate the relationship between medical school admissions and outcomes.
Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Transitions of Care for Survivors of Childhood Cancer
Investigators: Trishana Nayiager, Stacey Marjerrison, Noah Ivers, Lawrence Grierson
Program Pillar(s): Education for Family Medicine
Description: This research aims to develop a validated conceptual framework of features that support the routine and follow-up care of adult survivors of childhood cancer in family physician community practice as defined by Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario models of survivorship care.
Transdisciplinary Approach to Older Adults' Care in Canadian Primary Care Settings
Investigators: Augustine Okoh, Michelle Howard, Henry Siu, Ellen Badone, Lawrence Grierson
Program Pillar(s): Education for Family Medicine
Description: This project focuses explores the prospect of a high-performance, transdisciplinary, interprofessional approach to the care of the elderly and aims to elucidate the educational antecedents and competencies that foster successful transdisciplinary practice.
Funding: McMaster Institute for Research on Aging
Certificates of Added Competence Impact Study
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Ilana Alice, Catherine Tong, Henry Siu, Margo Mountjoy, Michelle Howard, Jesse Guscott, Alexandra Farag, Alison Baker, Meredith Vanstone
Program Pillar(s): Education Policies and Practices for Improving Access and Delivery of Primary Care Family Medicine
Description: The College of Family Physicians of Canada’s Certificate of Added Competence (CAC) program denotes enhanced skill family physicians who function at the edge of the scope of family practice; however, there are concerns that it increases focused practice and decreases commitment to generalist care. The goal of the research is to provide an improved understanding of the impact of CACs on coordinated, community adaptive comprehensive care.
Funding: College of Family Physicians of Canada
Developing and Assessing Precision Technical Skill Expertise
Investigators: Lawrence Grierson, Ryan Brydges, Andrea Fiume, James Roberts, Digby Elliott, Merryn Constable
Program Pillar(s): Precision Skill Acquisition
Description: This work considers the psychomotor underpinnings of the acquisition, performance, and assessment of precision technical skills in applied and laboratory settings with the goal of extending contemporary theories of motor learning and clinical skills education.
Funding: Northumbria University Application Seed Funding Scheme, PGME Medical Education Research Grant (McMaster University)