Dear Colleagues,

As we are all only too aware, the current landscape for clinical teaching and training is dense with challenges — and opportunities. Protecting and promoting primary care by retaining our current primary care workforce — and working hard to attract great future family physicians to medical school and into our residency — is a key priority. Once learners have entered our program, we are all motivated to offer them a great experience and launch them successfully into a career of relationship centred service. The training experience will include explicit, practice enhancing confidence to shape a career which embraces and advocates for equity and anti-racism, contributes to Truth and Reconciliation for Indigenous People by ensuring access to culturally safe care and makes intentional decisions supporting sustainability and Planetary Health.

Shaping our main purpose, are an amazing array of possibilities, distractions and challenges including our upcoming accreditations, Ministry mandated residency expansion requiring creative collaboration with institutional partners/neighbours, continuing pandemic “recovery”, and the Outcomes of Training Project by the CFPC that comes with it the direction to imagine a three-year Family Medicine residency in place of our current two-year offering.

We are fortunate to have such a strong educational leadership and team. To ensure its success and sustainability, we are planning a very early hire of Dr. Sarah Kinzie’s replacement as Postgraduate Program Director. Sarah’s official term ends on June 30, 2023. Given Sarah’s promotion to Associate Chair, Education — and the need for a robust transition — we are now posting for the Postgraduate Program Director role to be hired and in place as soon as possible to work alongside Sarah until assuming the “solo” role on July 1, 2023.

If you want to make a substantial and sustained contribution to Education at this singular time in the DFM’s history, please consider applying for this role (information noted below). We seek candidates from across the department who are able to celebrate and translate the best of the DFM’s educational legacy into a future characterized by rapid change; calling on the courage to try new things and let go of assumptions and/or structures which are not “purpose-fitted” to our rapidly evolving context.

The Postgraduate Program Director is a leadership position within the Department of Family Medicine (DFM) that has overarching responsibility for the ongoing development, planning, implementation, administration and quality of the educational experience in the core and enhanced skills Family Medicine Residency programs across the distributed network of McMaster training sites, in keeping with McMaster’s reputation for leading innovations that are responsive to emerging needs to create a Brighter World.

Qualifications and Expectations:

The Postgraduate Program Director is a faculty member in the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, and holds certification by the College of Family Physicians of Canada [CFPC] and has a minimum of 5 years teaching at the postgraduate (PG) level.

The Postgraduate Program Director demonstrates:

• Strong leadership ability
• Ability to negotiate, mediate conflicts, advocate and resolve problems
• Strong communication, collaboration and interpersonal skills
• Critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, using innovative approaches
• Credibility as a clinician and educator
• Engagement in professional development relevant to the role (e.g. attendance at educational conferences, leadership courses, PGME faculty development workshops)
• Advocacy for residency education in coordination with promoting excellence in patient care
• Professionalism, with respect for diversity and confidentiality for residents and teachers
• Shared responsibility for modelling and supporting policies and practices that are aligned with DFM’s commitment to truth and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, to addressing the harms of racism experienced by Black and other racialized individuals, and to creating and sustaining an equitable, diverse and inclusive workplace for all

Time Commitment and Support

This role is three days/week commitment. A commensurate stipend and administrative support will be provided during the term of the position.

Financial support for costs associated with required attendance at conferences and meetings will be provided

Office space at the David Braley Health Sciences Centre.

Please submit CV and letter of interest, no later than September 30, 2022, to:

Jennifer Lennox

Manager, Faculty Relations

lennoxj1@mcmaster.ca

For full role description, please click on the buttons below.

PG DIRECTOR ROLE DESCRIPTION