Academic History

I obtained my PhD from the University of Waterloo in 2001 and joined the Wilson Centre in 2002 as a scientist, with an Assistant Professor appointment at the University of Toronto.  I worked first with the Department of Surgery and then from 2007 I was the Director of the Centre for Research in Nursing Education at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing.  In 2009 I joined the SickKids Learning and Research Institutes and the Department of Paediatrics and most recently the Memorial University’s Clinical Learning and Simulation Centre to provide leadership in the development and evaluation of simulation programs and building research capacity.

Research Interests

My research career commenced with studying factors influencing the acquisition of technical skills for surgery and particularly methods of optimizing the use of simulation in medical education and training, factors influencing retention, maintenance and transfer of skills and the validation of innovative assessment methods to measure these effects. More recently my interests have evolved to study the acquisition of complex clinical skills, behaviours and attitudes by progressively contextualizing the simulated experiences to match the learners’ needs.  Finally, I have begun investigating the use of virtual learning environments (e.g., educational networking and serious and educational games) as means of preparing and improving retention of skills learned in simulation.