Schedule
Session Descriptions are subject to change.
Day 1 - Monday, March 9, 2026
Welcome
Date and Time
Monday March 9, 2026
10:00am – 10:30am
Speaker(s)
Lindsay Baker
Stella Ng
Trust and Trustworthiness
Date and Time
Monday March 9, 2026
10:30am – 12:00pm
Speaker(s)
Maya Goldenberg
Sabrina Deutsch Salamon
Description
Trust is a heavily researched concept across many disciplines because of the important role it plays as a decisional heuristic for navigating social complexity, allowing for cooperation to happen and relationships to develop. Trust research has earned an urgency in recent years, as measures of both interpersonal and institutional trust are pointing downward to suggest what may be a crisis of trust. This panel features trust researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds (philosophy and psychology) presenting contemporary scholarship on interpersonal trust in the workplace (Dr. Salamon) and public trust in science (Dr. Goldenberg).
Share the load! How professionals can address the health workforce crisis by teaching and learning to redistribute care
Date and Time
Monday March 9, 2026
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Speaker(s)
Aaron Orkin
Munira Abdulwasi
Description
Canada is facing a massive health workforce crisis. We might be able to solve the problem by engaging and positioning lay and community health workers to deliver important health interventions. We know this approach can work, and that vibrant community health worker programs a key ingredient of effective health systems, but most Canadian health professionals have little training or experience in building lay health worker programs or working alongside lay providers. This session will explore solutions to that problem, and teach participants how to bring lay workers into their practice and community.
Education Design for Systems Transformation
Date and Time
Monday March 9, 2026
2:45pm – 4:00pm
Speaker(s)
Aman Sium
Nicole Woods
Description
Many educators are deeply committed to social justice advocacy, yet find it challenging to translate those commitments into sustained, system-level change within institutional settings. What role can education play when the goal is not only awareness, but transformation?
In this dialogue, Aman Sium and Nicole Woods reflect on the creation of Project Chrysalis, an action-oriented learning initiative designed to support systems change within hospital research environments. Drawing on different intellectual traditions, including community-engaged leadership and cognitive science, the speakers explore how trust emerged as the essential condition for education to move from critique to action.
Through conversation, they examine:
- Why advocacy for social justice often stalls without intentional education design
- Why trust must be earned and structured, not assumed, in institutional change work
- How evidence-informed learning can support people at every level of a system to act differently. Not just think differently
Grounded in research on cognitive integration and systems transformation, and informed by real-world implementation, this session positions education as a practical, relational mechanism for social justice-oriented change. Participants will leave with concrete insights into how to design learning that enables action, sustains trust, and creates the conditions for durable transformation without sacrificing rigour.
Day 2 - Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Short Talk Submissions
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
9:00am – 10:30am
Talks
Global Network learning as a transformative pedagogical tool in nursing education: Preliminary findings
Speaker: Roya Haghiri-Vijeh
Fostering critical reflection through virtual reality simulation: Advancing transformative learning in health professions education
Speaker: Niki Soilis
The Politics of Trust: History, Memory and Anti-racism Education in Canadian Academic Hospitals
Speaker: Csilla Kalocsai
Navigating Complexity: A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Critical Reflection in Physiotherapy Learners
Speaker: Melanie MacKinnon
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Oppression Focused Faculty Development: Tensions in Programming in Health Professions Education
Speaker: Qian Wu
Practicing Trust: Middle-Dwelling as Transformative Pedagogy
Speaker: Shelley O’Brien
Short Talk Submissions (Room 1)
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
10:45am – 12:00pm
Talks (Room 1)
Realizing the Transformative Potential of Lived Experience Engagement in Psychiatric Education: Developing Recommendations to Strengthen An Academic Commitment and Action
Speaker: Holly Harris
Learning through the interview process
Speaker: Swati Das
The Heat of the Moment: How Leaning Into Discomfort Builds Better Clinicians
Speaker: Lisa McQueen
How can collaborative competence be nurtured through intentional team structures for a distributed multi-disciplinary team?
Speaker: Lydea Gn
Applying Reflexivity in the Design and Implementation of an Equity-Based Data Governance Framework
Speaker: David Bookalam
Short Talk Submissions (Room 2)
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
10:45am – 12:00pm
Talks (Room 2)
WINDS: A Program Theory for Transforming the Hidden Curriculum Through Connection
Speaker: Lester Bussey
Negotiating Trust Through Engaged Mentorship: Lessons from an Affirmative Educational Pathway
Speaker: Oshan Fernando
Transforming Assessment: Leveraging Large Language Models for high throughput evaluation of narrative feedback in Diagnostic Radiology Education
Speaker: Benjamin Kwan
Redesigning Nursing Skills Evaluation to Enhance Learning and Clinical Practice
Speaker: Kateryna Metersky
Working Towards Transformation: Exploring the impact of a rotation in equity-oriented palliative care on physicians’ perspectives and practices
Speakers: Alissa Tedesco
Workshop (Online Only)
Resonance & Repair: “A Dream Deferred”
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Speaker(s)
Lester Bussey
Description
“There is no trust where fear lives—but we can change where fear is allowed to live.”
In 2022, an obstetrics and gynecology residency program lost its accreditation following a cascading systems failure. Was the collapse the result of systemic deficiency or cultural toxicity? Could it be that these forces were so deeply entangled that the question itself reveals our blind spots about organizational change?
This transformative, narrative-driven workshop invites participants to engage with that very question. Not as outside observers, but as change agents capable of reshaping their own learning environments. The session is built on the WINDS Theory of Change—Psychological Safety, Trust/Reciprocity, and Relational Coordination as interdependent mechanisms of organizational transformation.
The workshop opens with “The Tale of Verto”, a short parable about a caterpillar learning to build a shelter of trust against the bitter wind of Timor. This story frames the emotional landscape of hidden curricula and sets the tone for collective reflection. Participants are welcomed into an invitational learning space where examining difficult truths becomes both possible and safe.
“Storytime” is followed by a structured debate between two advocates. One argues the program failure was primarily structural, while the other asserts that cultural toxicity made repair impossible. This exercise exposes how systemic and relational factors intertwine, to shape organizational outcomes and individual identity formation.
Participants then analyze artifacts from “A Dream Deferred — Gone with the Wind” using the WINDS lens. Working in small groups, participants surface patterns of fear, breakdowns, and coordination failures. It is our hope you will connect these to real-world challenges in their own institutions.
The session ends with a collaborative design lab, where participants develop scaffolding for actionable strategies. These strategies are grounded in the Relational Model of Organizational Change, WINDS emphasizes resonance before repair, shared goals, mutual self-interest, and gratitude as the foundation for systemic transformation.
Workshop (In-Person Only, Room 1)
The Heat of the Moment: How Leaning Into Discomfort Builds Better Clinicians
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Speaker(s)
Lisa McQueen
Description
Healthcare is changing at an unprecedented rate. Our patients are diverse and complex. The work we do is often fraught with unexpected and challenging experiences. As clinical supervisors in this type of setting, we are charged with supporting our learners to manage difficult clinical encounters. We do our best, despite ever-growing caseloads and administrative duties. However, what we may be failing to teach our students is the following:
a. Uncomfortable clinical situations are common, despite level of experience
b. Sitting in discomfort, over time, can lead to significant moral distress and burnout
c. Having the tools to manage uncomfortable situations more effectively can improve our ability to be present with our patients, thus making us better clinicians (and more resilient humans!)
d. Embracing discomfort rather than turning away from it can provide profound learning opportunities
We feel it is critical to devote focused training time during clinical placements to prepare our learners to adapt to situations that have yet to be imagined and navigate the multifaceted layers of clinical encounters, many of which can be uncomfortable. Work undertaken from the area of adaptive expertise proposes that health professional education should not focus on producing experts but instead, preparing future experts (Myopolous et al., 2018). This should include learning to sit with discomfort (our own, theirs, the patients). Rather than viewing discomfort as something to avoid, can we pause and imagine the possibility that it may offer valuable lessons?
To support this often missed education opportunity, we developed a framework to facilitate debriefs and support deeper student learning. We have called this framework, “QUEST”, an acronym for “Quick Uncomfortable Experience Safe Talk”. We also created an online chat forum where students and clinicians could share their experiences and learn with and from each other. We hoped that sharing within this group setting would normalize some of the strong emotions that may accompany the experience of challenging clinical situations and encourage reflective practice for all involved.
This presentation seeks to explore the murky waters of teaching and learning during uncomfortable situations. We will review current literature on the subject and share practical tools for navigating “big feelings” that may accompany these encounters. We will convince you why becoming an “adaptive expert” is so important in today’s rapidly changing work environments and share ideas to use during clinical placements to help learners build their adaptive muscles. Finally, we will describe our QUEST project, including our debrief framework, the online chat forum and student insights.
Workshop (In-Person Only, Room 2)
Using Poetry to Transform Interprofessional Education (IPE)
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Speaker(s)
Kateryna Metersky
Description
Instructors delivering education to healthcare provider learners are consistently facing challenges with how to prepare such learners for collaborative, person-centered practice in complex healthcare environments. Traditional interprofessional education (IPE) prioritizes technical teamwork skills and neglects the emotional, reflective, and humanistic sides of care. This workshop introduces attendees to an aesthetic pedagogical approach utilized by a patient-partner, to help learners reflect on patient experiences, deepen empathy, and bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Over a two-year period, six virtual IPE sessions were run and involved 320 learners from 14 health professions, including nursing, medicine, pharmacy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, spiritual care, and social work. Participants explored a patient-partner-authored poem, presented by the patient-partner. Participants then engaged in small-group discussions and created their own artistic reflections on their learning about partnering with patients in care, such as drawings, visual art, poetry, and storytelling. Analysis revealed that over 90% of learners reported a stronger understanding of interprofessional collaboration and patients’ roles within healthcare teams. Thematic analysis of qualitative responses highlighted learners’ increased empathy, appreciation for holistic care, active engagement, and awareness of the systemic challenges affecting both patients and healthcare providers. Many learners reflected that the poetry performance allowed them to emotionally connect with a patient’s perspective and consider how their own actions impact the experiences and care trajectory of the patient.
Workshop participants will gain practical strategies to implement aesthetic and patient-partner-led learning in nursing and healthcare provider education. Attendees will learn approaches to designing sessions, facilitating reflective discussions, and integrating collaborative aesthetic activities, with guidance for virtual or hybrid formats. A brief interactive exercise will allow participants to experience firsthand how aesthetic learning fosters empathy, critical thinking, and engagement.
By combining artistic expression with structured reflection and discussion, this workshop demonstrates how learners can translate knowledge into meaningful practice. Participants will leave with actionable ideas for creating innovative, humanistic learning experiences that strengthen interprofessional collaboration, foster empathy, and enhance person-centered care, preparing future healthcare professionals to engage effectively with patients and colleagues in complex clinical settings.
Short Talk Submissions (Room 1)
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
2:45pm – 4:00pm
Talks
Extending the Principles of Transformative Education to Evaluation: The Co-production of National Recovery College Metrics
Speaker: Holly Harris
Collaborative teaching for transformation in post-graduate family medicine: Teaching with teams for teams
Speaker: Jackie Bellaire
From Specialization to Integration: Work-based Learning for Health System Transformation
Speaker: Farah Bendahmane
From Symbolic Violence to Social Justice: Transforming Medical Student Professional Identity through Clinical Ethnography
Speaker: Hannah Connolly
Enhancing Licensing Exam Success: Innovative Redevelopment of Nursing Theory OERs
Speaker: Kateryna Metersky
Short Talk Submissions (Room 2)
Date and Time
Tuesday March 10, 2026
2:45pm – 4:00pm
Talks
Driving Transformative Education: A Mission and Values Aligned Learning Initiative
Speaker: Vanessa Nicholas-Schmidt
Five ways to get a grip on reflexive, equitable curriculum redesign in academic health sciences
Speaker: Lavinia Kajura
That’s Interesting: Epistemic Injustice as Symbolic Violence in Medical Education
Speaker: Hannah Connolly
Reflections on the integration of artificial intelligence in medical education: What does epistemic trust have to do with it?
Speaker: Suchismita Sarkar
Integrating Anti-Racism in Health Sciences Education: An Evaluation of GLPH 281, a Racism and Health Course at Queen’s University
Speaker: Bisola Olaseni
Day 3 - Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Transformative Evaluation as Enabler of Trust
Date and Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
9:00am – 10:30am
Speaker(s)
Kathryn Parker
Yasser Ismail
Description
It is proposed that one cannot engage in transformative work without looking both inward and outwards. This session will create a space where participants can locate who they are as evaluators in the context of where and how they practice – what ways of thinking about and practicing evaluation most resonate with them and/or are deemed valid in the contexts in which they evaluate; what are the underlying assumptions of those paradigms and praxis. We propose that evaluation is a transformative force – enabling us to create interventions that challenge the status quo. It begs the question; what is Transformative Evaluation (TE)? How is it different than current evaluation efforts in health professions education? To unpack these questions, participants will have an opportunity to explore the value of reframing their recent evaluation efforts through a more transformative lens and will be invited to dialogue about the value of TE to the building and restoration of trust.
Trust in the Context of Truth and Reconciliation
Date and Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
10:45am – 12:00pm
Speaker(s)
Ed Conners/Tecumseh
Stephanie Nixon
Description
In dialogue with each other and with the audience, Tecumseh/Ed and Stephanie will explore how we might bring together worldviews to create peaceful relationships built on trust. They will discuss their framing of anti-oppression and peacemaking as elements of future building (www.FutureBuilding.global). They will draw on lessons about trust from teachings, including the Two Row Wampum, Willie Ermine’s “ethical space”, and the coin model of privilege.
Low Trust, High Stakes: Why Civil Discourse Matters More Than Ever
Date and Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
1:00pm – 2:30pm
Speaker(s)
Randy Boyagoda
Description
In this talk, writer and professor Randy Boyagoda, the University of Toronto’s Advisor on Civil Discourse, reflects on the state and stakes of civil discourse these days, on and off campus, and across personal professional, and public settings. In particular, he will explore the importance of trust in and across our personal, professional, and public commitments, and its importance to ensuring robust and vibrant cultures of productive disagreement. These efforts, which we might collectively describe as a commitment to thinking out loud together, support the advance of knowledge, serve the common good and help in the pursuit of truth.
In-Person Social
Date and Time
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
3:00pm
Location
The Queen & Beaver Public House
35 Elm St
Toronto, ON M5G 1H1