MINDEMOYA—A Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) faculty member who works at the Manitoulin Central Family Health Team and Manitoulin Health Centre in Mindemoya, Dr. Frances Kilbertus, is among six distinguished educators to receive a 2017 Associated Medical Services (AMS) Phoenix Fellowship.
Dr. Kilbertus, NOSM associate professor, and Dr. James Goertzen, NOSM assistant dean, continuing education and professional development, are among six distinguished educators to receive the award.
Dr. Kilbertus is focusing her Fellowship on projects that explore how the community, the workplace, health professionals and learners are interwoven in a process of learning and practicing palliative care in the culturally diverse rural community on Manitoulin Island.
“The focus for the first year of the fellowship will be exploring community involvement, creating opportunities for engagement and dialogue around death and dying, and developing learning tools for palliative care that are inclusive of an Indigenous perspective,” Dr. Kilbertus says. “The second year will focus on the rural clinical workplace; how learners and practitioners understand and appreciate palliative care and how compassionate learning environments are created and sustained.”
The Fellowship from AMS Healthcare is awarded each year and specifically targets individuals with strong leadership abilities who are committed to nurturing and sustaining the learning and practice of compassionate care. The intent of the Fellowship is to provide support (the equivalent of $50,000) to individuals to allow them to devote time to engage in leadership activities, building capacity in their home institution and across Ontario.
“The Northern Ontario School of Medicine was founded on a strong social accountability mandate,” says Roger Strasser, NOSM Dean and CEO. “These fellowships, which advance compassionate care within the health-care community and sustain compassion in the environments on which health professionals learn and work, fit perfectly with the Schools’ distributed, community-engaged, learning-centred model of education and research.”
