Dr. Margaret Steele

The Campus Food Bank and Student Life are partnering together to host a food drive on the St. John’s campus, to assist with increasing demands for the food bank's services.

On Monday, Oct. 31, please consider participating in this drive. You can drop off donations in the box in the Faculty of Medicine atrium, and they will be delivered to Campus Food Bank. For more information, to see a list of high-demand items and to make an electronic monetary donation, visit Student Life.

Undergraduate Medical Education accreditation

I am delighted to share with you that our undergraduate medical education program received a full eight-year accreditation from the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools (CACMS)! Memorial University was one of the first medical schools in Canada to conduct a fully virtual CACMS accreditation cycle.

Always an enormous undertaking, the process for accreditation can only be successful with the participation and involvement of all stakeholders associated with the medical school. I would like to extend my thanks to all learners, faculty and staff who were involved with the recent accreditation process, especially Dr. Taryn Hearn for her role as Associate Dean, Undergraduate Medical Education (UGME) as well as the Faculty Undergraduate Accreditation Lead, and Mr. Brian Kerr, UGME Curriculum and Accreditation Advisor.

Reminder: Destination Excellence 2022 planning half days

Registration is open for the 2022 Destination Excellence update and planning half days. This year’s sessions will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 1 - 5 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 4, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., both on site at the Faculty of Medicine and online.

Come hear about all the excellent work the project teams have been doing and about other significant initiatives at the Faculty of Medicine, such as the collaboration with the University of Prince Edward Island.

There will also be a plenary session on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism (EDI-AR) offered by Dr. Paul Banahene Adjei, Interim Associate Vice-President (Indigenous Research) and Interim Dean, School of Social Work).

To register for the November 2 session (1 p.m. to 5 p.m.): https://bit.ly/de22-1

To register for the November 4 session (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.): https://bit.ly/de22-2

If you have any questions about the sessions, please contact Gerona McGrath.

Presentation of promotion and tenure

On Tuesday, Oct. 18 during our Faculty Council meeting, we had an opportunity to present certificates to faculty receiving promotion and\or tenure. Not everyone is able to attend, but here is the list of those who received promotion and\or tenure:

• Dr. Curtis French – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Division of BioMedical Sciences.
• Dr. Amanda Hall – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Family Medicine.
• Dr. Atanu Sarkar – Promotion to Professor, Division of Community Health and Humanities.
• Dr. Susan Avery – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Family Medicine.
• Dr. Rufaro Chitsike – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Medicine.
• Dr. Tyna Doyle – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Pediatrics.
• Dr. Suzanne Drodge – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Oncology.
• Dr. Connie Hapgood – Promotion to Clinical Associate Professor, Discipline of Radiology.
• Dr. Yordan Karaivanov – Promotion to Clinical Associate Professor, Discipline of Family Medicine.
• Dr. Simon Kirby - Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Laboratory Medicine.
• Dr. Lynette (Lyn) Power – Promotion to Associate Professor, Discipline of Family Medicine.
• Dr. Grigore (Greg) Radu – Promotion to Professor, Discipline of Psychiatry.
• Dr. Gillian Sheppard – Promotion to Associate Professor and tenure, Discipline of Emergency Medicine.
• Ms. Michelle Swab – Promotion to Librarian III.

Congratulations everyone! I would like to thank the chairs and members of the three promotion and tenure committees in the Faculty of Medicine, Community Health and Humanities, BioMedical Sciences, and the non-bargaining faculty, who were involved in this year’s process.

Fall Convocation

On Thursday, Oct. 20, we held our fall 2022 convocation in person. It was wonderful to see our graduate students recognized for completing their respective programs. This included 36 graduate students:

• Graduate Diplomas: 4.
• Master of Health Ethics: 3.
• Master of Public Health: 15.
• Master of Science in Medicine: 10.
• PhD in Medicine: 4.

Congratulations as well to Dr. June Harris and Dr. Thomas Michalak, who both received Professor Emeritus. You can read more at the Gazette about one of our Doctor of Philosophy graduates, Dr. Stephanie Blandford.

New Faculty of Medicine website

In order to meet Memorial University graphic standards and be organized to better meet our site visitors, our website has been reorganized and rebranded to exist as a site within the main Memorial www.mun.ca domain. The new site launched on Wednesday, Oct. 12.

With the move to www.mun.ca, the Faculty of Medicine’s home page is now www.mun.ca/medicine. This also impacts all subsites and links within the old website. We are asking all external partners to please update any links connected to our site in order to keep the information easily accessible.

Recognizing that it will take time for Google to re-index our website and for internal and external organizations to update their links, all old www.med.mun.ca addresses currently redirect to the new homepage. Certain pages like faculty profiles still exist and can be found in the Faculty A-Z page. If your site requires updates or if you see an error (typo, broken link, missing hyperlinks, incorrect redirects), please email website@med.mun.ca.

I would like to personally thank the many people and their offices involved in this huge project. The Faculty of Medicine Website Redesign Team included staff from the Health Sciences Library, Health Sciences Information and Media Services (HSIMS), Communications Office and the Office of Professional Education and Development. This project also involved the Division of Marketing and Communications, Information Technology Services (ITS). And thank you to all staff, faculty and learners who have been involved in this ongoing project.

The Faculty of Medicine has developed a Gender Inclusive Language document which encourages clinicians to refer to patients using their correct pronouns and to create an environment in which patients feel comfortable providing their pronouns. These goals will be assessed as part of Clinical Skills in UGME.

One recommendation is that clinicians identify their own pronouns when introducing themselves to patients. This practice helps to provide an explicit safe space for patients. They may then ask the patient for their name and pronouns.

In the event that a patient does not understand, it is up to the discretion of the interviewer to determine whether or not to explain the concept of pronouns. If a patient does not feel comfortable sharing pronouns, or does not use pronouns (i.e. referred to only by name), the interviewer need not inquire further.

The Faculty of Medicine also recommends that individuals do not use the term “preferred pronouns” when introducing themselves, since an individual’s gender is not a preference — it is who they are.

These are some of the most common personal pronoun sets currently in use.

Every person deserves — and has the right — to be validated and affirmed for who they are! (Egale)

Special thanks to Dr. Maria Goodridge and team for their work developing the Gender Inclusive Language document.