Dr. Vernon Curran, professor of medical education and director of academic research and development in the Faculty of Medicine, has been awarded the 2013 Distinguished Researchers Award from the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE).

This award, which was established to recognize an individual who has made a sustained and significant contribution to university continuing education in Canada, will be presented Friday, May 24, in Montreal, Que., during the CAUCE annual conference.

 Dr. Curran has a record of achievement in research and scholarship, with a particular focus over his career in the fields of continuing medical education (CME), continuing professional education, and interprofessional education in the health professions and adult education. His research program in CME has focused on factors influencing rural physician professional isolation, tele-education and CME delivery, and primary care and specialist physicians’ CME needs. He has led numerous research studies of the CME needs of physicians in specific disease areas, comparative studies exploring the effect of practice location on CME needs, and research related to rural medical education strategies for improving recruitment and retention of physicians in rural communities. 

Significant areas of research for Dr. Curran have also included the fields of tele-education, Internet-based learning and use of low and high-fidelity simulation in medical education. Research in simulation has included studies of the use of low-fidelity anatomical models, standardized patients (SPs) and high-fidelity patient simulators in medical education. Research in the field of interprofessional education (IPE) has focused on the evaluation of IPE outcomes, effect of instructional approaches on IPE outcomes, and system barriers to IPE and interprofessional care. He was co-lead of a major curriculum development and research project at Memorial University in the areas of IPE and interprofessional care.

Recent research has focused on exploring key factors influencing the retention of resuscitation skills across the health professions, development of tools for the assessment of interprofessional collaborator competencies and examining the state of non-formal adult learning amongst Canadian post-secondary institutions.