Alumni Spotlight - Dr. Ann Colbourne
Dr. Ann Colbourne, Discipline of Medicine, was presented with a
2006 Certificate of Merit from the Canadian Association of Medical
Education at the association’s annual meeting in London, Ont.,
in May.
Dr. Colbourne was nominated for award by Dr. John Harnett, former
chair of the Discipline of Medicine. In his letter of nomination, Dr.
Harnett made note of the outstanding contributions she has made to
undergraduate and postgraduate teaching at Memorial.
“She has received recognition locally, nationally and in the
United States for her teaching activities,” said Dr. Harnett.
“My closest interactions with Dr. Colbourne have been in
connection with her role in the internal medicine clerkship. When I
became chair of Medicine in 1996 I was involved in recruiting Dr.
Colbourne back to Memorial. At that time we were undergoing major
curricular change including moving to a two-year clinical clerkship.
Dr. Colbourne took on the considerable challenge of revamping the
clinical clerkship in internal medicine in 1997 when she agreed to
become clerkship director.”
Dr. Colbourne’s reformations included introducing morning
reports, an academic half-day with a formal curriculum and the
organization of interprofessional journal clubs and grand
rounds.
“As important and impressive as these contributions were, her
innovations in clerkship evaluation have been even more
significant,” said Dr. Harnett. “She introduced clinical
evaluation exercises, organized external benchmarking and introduced
the R.I.M.E, approach to evaluation of clinical clerks. Several other
clerkship programs have subsequently adopted these models. As chair
of Medicine it was a pleasure to work with such an enthusiastic,
innovative and self-motivated clinical educator.”
Dr. Colbourne’s previous awards at Memorial include the 1997
Dr. Gus Rowe Award for teaching family medicine residents. She has
also received the D.W. Ingram award for clinical teaching on two
occasions.