The Royal College is proud to recognize the recipients of the 2025 Royal College/Associated Medical Services CanMEDS Research Grant, the Dr. Karen Mann Catalyst Grant in Medical Education Research, and the Medical Education Research Grant. 

This year’s funded projects reflect a strong commitment to advancing medical education through innovation, inclusion and evidence-informed practice.

2025 Royal College/Associated Medical Services CanMEDS Research Grant

The Royal College, in partnership with the Associated Medical Services (AMS), awards this grant to fund projects that leverage the 2015 CanMEDS Framework to advance the fields of residency education, continuing professional development and other health system-related areas of focus in Canada.

Tracy Moniz, PhD

“Negotiating professional identity and disability: An analysis of physicians' narratives”

This work sheds light on an underexplored aspect of professional identity formation: the experiences of physicians and learners with disabilities. Professional identity shapes how physicians see themselves, relate to patients, and work within health care teams. Yet, those with disabilities often face barriers to inclusion and belonging, which can affect how they integrate their personal and professional identities. 

By examining published first-person narratives, this study offers insight into the challenges and possibilities that arise when disability and medical professionalism intersect. These perspectives can help educators and institutions better understand how to create environments where all learners can thrive and bring the value of their lived experiences into their work. In doing so, it contributes to ongoing conversations about how medical education can foster diversity, belonging and compassionate practice.

Helen Toews, RD, PhD(c)

“The value, meaning and use assessment brings to and for physicians”

This work is important to medical education because it highlights the value and meaning physicians attribute to their assessment experiences, and how these experiences inform their clinical practice and internal judgment. Despite physicians spending decades engaged in continuing professional development, the role, structure and effects of assessment during this period remain underexplored. 

This study investigates contemporary assessment practices and their influence on physicians as described by physicians. Through examining how they interpret and use their assessment experiences in relation to their work, this study will offer practical insights to guide educators and organizations in designing more effective, context-sensitive assessments that align with both physician and institutional development goals.

Jacqueline Torti, PhD

“Elevating Leadership: Investigating Humility and Inclusivity in Medical Education”

This work is important to medical education because it builds on existing leadership development efforts by exploring how humility, an often underexamined character trait, may contribute to inclusive and psychologically safe learning environments in residency training. 

While leadership development in medicine has been shaped by empirical knowledge grounded in competencies, this study complements those foundations by using constructivist grounded theory to examine how physicians understand and enact humility in leadership. The research will inform the evolution of a Character-Based Leadership curriculum and contribute to continuing professional development initiatives. 

Aligned with CanMEDS competencies, particularly the Leader and Professional roles, this work expands the conversation around what effective leadership entails in contemporary medical education. Ultimately, it offers an invitation to reimagine what strength in leadership might look like, and to consider how humility could enrich it.

2025 Dr. Karen Mann Catalyst Grant in Medical Education Research

The Dr. Karen Mann Catalyst Grant in Medical Education Research is intended for Royal College Resident Affiliates and early career clinician educators to encourage entry into medical education research through mentorship. By supporting this audience, this grant enables growth and excellence in medical education research for decades to come.

Harpreet Pangli, MD, MHPE(c)

“Where did you learn that? Exploring where, how and from whom surgical residents learn to perform entrustability”

This work is important to medical education because it explores the hidden curriculum of surgical residency — specifically, how surgery residents learn to demonstrate entrustability and gain operative responsibility within Competency Based Medical Education (CBME).  
 
Entrustment decisions often rely on tacit expectations and access to informal social networks, creating inequities for those without insider connections. By revealing how these unspoken norms shape access to operative opportunities, this study offers insight into fostering transparent, equitable and inclusive training environments for all residents. It informs faculty development, challenges bias in entrustment decisions and supports residents in navigating expectations. 

Ultimately, it promotes a culture within the surgical community of practice where preparedness is judged by principles rather than hidden or unspoken preferences, ensuring all residents have fair opportunities to grow into competent and confident surgeons.

2025 Medical Education Research Grant

Funding excellence in Canadian specialty medical education research, this grant of up to $50,000 supports projects that will advance the field of postgraduate medical education or continuing professional development. 

Rola Ajjawi, PhD 

“Exploring the vulnerability-credibility tension in feedback conversations: A social imaginaries lens”

This work is important to medical education because balancing vulnerability and credibility is essential for challenging entrenched norms and creating inclusive clinical learning environments yet remains difficult for both teachers and learners. 

While research demonstrates that role modeling vulnerability can break down hierarchies, build credibility and foster open dialogue, a central tension persists between aspirational ideals and the real emotional and cognitive demands placed on educators and learners. 

By addressing these complex dynamics, we hope our work paves the way for meaningful and sustainable change in the culture of medical education. 

Adam Gavarkovs, PhD

“Enhancing autonomous motivation to engage in continuing professional development: Impacts on well-being”

This work is important to medical education because it will enhance our understanding of how to address poor physician well-being and burnout, which can undermine the quality of patient care and the stability of the health care workforce. 

Our mixed-methods research explores continuing professional development (CPD) as a means for supporting physician well-being. Specifically, we aim to investigate a brief goal-setting intervention designed to help physicians set learning goals that reflect their personal values, which we predict will lead to a boost in their well-being as they pursue their goals. 

This online, scalable intervention can be offered by CPD providers on its own or integrated into physician coaching programs. Our project represents a collaboration between four university CPD offices, facilitating knowledge mobilization and laying the foundation for ongoing multi-institutional research on CPD and physician well-being.

Stella Ng, PhD, Reg. CASLPO

“Inviting Uncertainty to the Conversation: Exploring a Case-Based Dialogic Learning Activity”

This work is important to health professions education because it addresses a pervasive but often undertaught reality in clinical practice: navigating uncertainty well. 

By integrating adaptive expertise and critically reflective practice into team-based contexts, this study equips practitioners with the knowledge and capability to navigate complex, ethically charged and value-conflicted situations collaboratively. It pushes beyond traditional, individual-focused approaches by embracing interprofessional dialogic learning rooted in real-world complexity. 

With evidence-informed pedagogies and embedded implementation across diverse clinical settings, this initiative has the potential to transform how health professionals learn to manage uncertainty — not just with competence, but also with criticality, responsiveness and compassion.

Catherine Patocka, MD, FRCPC, MHPE, PhD

“A realist evaluation of feedback to faculty in postgraduate medical education at the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine”

This work is important to medical education because it addresses a critical but underexplored dimension of the feedback process — feedback from learners to teachers. In the CBME era, effective feedback is essential to learning, yet most research and institutional practice focus only on feedback directed toward learners. 

Understanding how upward feedback is implemented, what mechanisms make it effective and under what conditions it improves teaching quality will help close this gap. By developing a robust, evidence-informed program theory, this work will guide the design of upward feedback systems that enhance teaching quality, foster a culture of reciprocal feedback and ultimately strengthen postgraduate medical education.

Michelle Ryan, MD, MSc, MHPE

“Comparing video- and simulation-based educational interventions to enhance neonatal resuscitation performance, using the Instructional Design Iron Triangle”

This work is important to medical education because it addresses the critical need for maintaining and enhancing neonatal resuscitation skills among health care providers beyond initial certification. 

While the Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP) provides foundational training, competence declines without regular reinforcement. By comparing video-based to simulation-based booster sessions, this study evaluates which method is more effective, efficient and engaging for sustaining such high-stakes clinical skills. 

These study results will provide useful insight for health care institutions in determining ways to augment NRP skills in between NRP certification courses. Ultimately, this work supports improved patient safety by ensuring health care providers are prepared to respond effectively to neonatal emergencies, while also guiding curriculum design and resource allocation in medical education.

Jonathan Sherbino, MD, Med, FRCPC, FAcadMEd(UK), DRCPSC(Clin Ed)

“Expertise in Reasoning: Exploring the Characteristics of System 1 Rapid Processing Project”

This study addresses a critical gap in medical education by examining the poorly understood mechanisms of rapid, intuitive “System 1” diagnostic reasoning — an ability central to clinical expertise. 

Traditional training often emphasizes slow, analytical reasoning, but evidence shows that expert physicians can accurately generate diagnoses within seconds, a skill essential in time-pressured situations. By comparing experts and residents interpreting lab data under brief exposures, the project will clarify how experiential knowledge shapes fast, accurate diagnostic hypotheses. 

Findings could shift postgraduate training toward deliberately engineered exposure to diverse, representative cases rather than relying solely on lengthy, rare-case analyses. This has the potential to optimize diagnostic skill acquisition, better prepare trainees for real-world clinical demands, and inform evidence-based curriculum design, directly impacting both patient care quality and efficiency in clinical decision-making.

Matthew Sibbald, MD, MHPE, MSc, PhD, FRCPC

“An Entrustable Transition to Residency: How aligned are undergraduate and postgraduate competency frameworks”

This work matters because the transition from medical school to residency marks a shift in responsibility — where learners shift from being students learning to be a doctor to front-line clinicians in discipline-specific training. It is not just a change in title, but a change in what learners are expected to do. 

By making explicit what learners can be trusted to do — and what supervision they still require — competency based medical education (CBME) holds promise in supporting learners and supervisors alike through this transition. But there is a problem: undergraduate and postgraduate CBME systems were not designed as a continuum. As a result, learners often feel underprepared for this transition, faculty remain uncertain, and residency programs question readiness. 

Our work explores this disconnect — mapping CBME expectations across training levels and surfacing how this critical handover is experienced. The goal: more transparent, supported and trustworthy transitions into residency — and professional identity.

Meredith Young, PhD

“The roles of clinical assessment tools in patient care: an exploration of educational implications”

This work is important to medical education because clinical assessment tools — tools that generate scores, support clinical decisions, or access resources — are frequently used in the delivery of patient care, but we know little about how learners learn to use these tools “appropriately.” 

Our work exploring when, how and why clinical assessment tools are used in patient care suggests that clinical assessments shape a patient encounter, influence clinical reasoning, and are seen as aids, agents or antagonists to patient care. By exploring when, how and why senior residents use clinical assessments, we can better understand the role of clinical assessment tools in patient care and how learners understand the use and value of these tools. 

With a more fulsome understanding of how learners learn to use these tools for patient care, we can better support residents as they learn when, how and why to use clinical assessment tools.