Dr. Kyla Hildebrand wins 2020 Royal College AMS Donald Richards Wilson Award for CanMEDS integration
Kyla Hildebrand, MD, FRCPC, is well-known for her leadership in undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. She has successfully integrated CanMEDS Roles into six fellowship programs at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and at institutions across Canada. In recognition of her success in innovatively and diligently applying this framework in diverse pedagogical circumstances, she is this year’s recipient of the Royal College AMS Donald Richards Wilson Award for CanMEDS integration.
A clinical associate professor at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and its director of postgraduate medical education for pediatric Clinical Immunology and Allergy, Dr. Hildebrand has made her mark in curricular innovation — and CanMEDS has been a big part of that. Even during her recruitment to UBC in 2013, she made her passion for the CanMEDS Roles very clear.
“Consistent with her commitment to medical education, of all the topics that Dr. Hildebrand could have used to pitch her candidacy for the position at BC Children’s Hospital — her expertise in allergy and her proficiency in pediatric clinical immunology — she chose to emphasize her passion for medical education and, more specifically, her interest and expertise in teaching and assessing the non-Medical Expert CanMEDS Roles,” recalls Stuart Turvey, MBBS, FRCPC, professor of pediatric immunology at UBC.
Dr. Kyla Hildebrand (Submitted by Dr. Hildebrand)
A national contribution
Dr. Hildebrand is chair of a distributed academic half day across the country, where she has implemented CanMEDS Roles in six fellowship programs: UBC (Internal Medicine and Pediatrics streams), University of Manitoba (Internal Medicine and Pediatrics streams), Western University (Internal Medicine stream) and Dalhousie University (Pediatrics stream). This year, at the request of residents, the Clinical Immunology and Allergy programs (adult and pediatric) at the University of Toronto will join the initiative.
These innovations “should be replicated across Canada,” says Ravi Sidhu, MD, FRCSC, associate dean of medical education at UBC. He also notes Dr. Hildebrand’s success in using the CanMEDS Roles to help those who are struggling.
“She takes a competency-based, CanMEDS-focused approach to assist learners who need further support,” he says, “and has been a remediation supervisor in the Department of Pediatrics to assist learners in difficulty with the Professionalism Role.”
Small program, big impact
Among her contributions to medical education, Dr. Hildebrand has had a big impact on a very small fellowship program. She incorporated CanMEDS Roles into the yearly observed structured clinical exam she prepares for fellows in the UBC Clinical Immunology and Allergy fellowship programs. She also developed a curriculum map with the intrinsic CanMEDS roles for a Transition-to-Practice Clinic to teach and mentor pediatric allergy/immunology fellows throughout their fellowship.
“Her efforts have positively affected many other fellowship training programs,” says Adelle R. Atkinson, MD, FRCPC, associate professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Hildebrand is also co-director of the Asthma Clinic at BC Children’s Hospital and a clinical investigator for the hospital’s research institute (Childhood Diseases cluster).
Over the past two years, she has received numerous accolades from within and outside of UBC. These include an award for excellence in clinical teaching, a medical staff association award for mentor and teacher of the year, and a national John Howard Toogood Award for Excellence in Teaching.
In addition to certification in Pediatrics and Clinical Immunology and Allergy, Dr. Hildebrand holds a Master of Science in Community Health, Health Practitioner Teacher Education, from the University of Toronto.
Dr. Hildebrand takes a selfie with her Royal College AMS Donald Richards Wilson Award for CanMEDS integration (Submitted photo)
Michele Harvey-Blankenship | July 29, 2020
