The Medical Graduates’ Society 2011 Dr. Wallace Ingram Award goes to Dr. J.T.H. Connor, John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine.

Dr. Connor is the co-ordinator of Humanities, Ethics and Law in Medicine (Clinical Skills 2) and faculty lead of the Medical Humanities and Professionalism Unit, Medical Education and Scholarship Centre (MESC). His project is Medical Professionalism in the Canadian Context: Learning, Teaching, and Doing It.

Dr. Connor notes that new accreditation standards state that medical schools must ensure that the learning environment for medical students promotes the development of explicit and appropriate professional attributes in attitudes, behaviours and identity.

With the help of $10,000 funding from the Dr. Wallace Ingram Award, Dr. Connor will examine what the phrase “professional attributes” means in a specifically Canadian context. “The overwhelming bulk of the literature on medical professionalism has emanated from the United States during the last couple of decades and has been written by American practitioners,” he said. “It is the goal of this project to develop a preliminary set of values, guides, topics and readings that will resonate with our medical students and, hopefully, their colleagues across Canada.”

Dr. Connor is a leading medical historian in Canada who has been studying the development of medicine and health care delivery in both the United States and Canada for over 30 years.

“Through this project it is likely that Memorial’s Faculty of Medicine could be seen as an educational leader in this area,” said Dr. Connor. 

In this project he will be able to build on the strengths of an informal team consisting of Dr. Christopher Martin of the Medical Education Scholarship Centre who is also a post-doctoral fellow supervised by Dr. Connor (through the Arts and Medicine faculties) along with Faculty of Medicine colleagues Dr. Natalie Bandrauk, intensivist and internal medicine, and Dr. Jennifer Connor, medical humanities.

Dr. Connor has held the position of John Clinch Professor of Medical Humanities and History of Medicine since 2004 and is cross-appointed to the Department of History at Memorial.

The Dr. Wallace Ingram Award was established in 2004 by the Medical Graduates’ Society (MGS) to honour Dr. Wallace Ingram, professor emeritus, internal medicine, for his outstanding contributions to medical education throughout his careers. Funded entirely through the MGS Annual Reunion Class Giving program, the award focuses on the support of medical education research and scholarly activity.