The 2021 Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME) included a session with 2021 AFMC-Gold Award honoree Dr. Marie-Ève Goyer and 2020 AFMC-Gold Award honoree Dr. Jillian Horton, in conversation with Gold Foundation President/CEO Dr. Richard I. Levin and AFMC (Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada) Vice President of Education Dr. Anna Karwowska. We are delighted to be able to share a video of the session here.
This AFMC-Gold Humanism Award and Lecture is presented annually to a Canadian leader who exemplifies humanism in healthcare – who cares with great compassion, collaboration, and scientific excellence.
The 2020 AFMC-Gold Humanism Award is presented to Dr. Jillian Horton, (read the full announcement here) an extraordinary physician-author, widely published writer and leader in medical education at University of Manitoba’s Max Rady College of Medicine in Winnipeg where she is the Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, the inaugural director of the Physician and Learner Wellness Program and the Director of the Alan Klass Health Humanities Program. Through her teaching, her clinical practice, and her words, she advocates for human connection and mindfulness for all of us.
Dr. Horton airs our deepest issues and conflicts, revealing the strength in our vulnerability. She pens an advice column and hosts a podcast for the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She leads a series featuring medical leaders at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa called Insights: Arts, Medicine and Life. And, in her recently published memoir, titled We Are All Perfectly Fine, she calls upon us to reclaim our full humanity as we reimagine medical education.
The 2021 AFMC-Gold Humanism Award is presented to Dr. Marie-Eve Goyer (read the full announcement here).
Dr. Goyer is a fierce and compassionate advocate for the most disadvantaged among us, within Quebec and around the globe. She embraces care of the entire person, walking humbly beside her patients through their toughest challenges, including homelessness, drug addiction, and severe mental health problems.
Dr. Goyer has clinical appointments at both the University of Montreal and the University of Sherbrooke, is a family physician at the Notre-Dame Hospital in the Addiction and Urban Medicine Department, is Assistant Medical Chief of Specific Services in Homelessness, Addiction and Mental Health at CIUSSS Centre-Sud-de-l’île-de-Montréal and Scientific Director of the Clinical and Organizational Support Team in Addiction and Homelessness at the Institut universitaire sur les dépendances.
She practices a “Quebec-style” approach steeped in cooperation. As she has said, “We are taught to have the right distance in medicine from patients. I think this is fundamentally wrong.”
She never accepts things as they are. She has been a passionate leader in implementing supervised injection services for patients with drug addiction, advocating for safer care in an arena that carries immense stigma. She is also a medical advisor to the director of the MSSS’s addiction and homelessness services and has been a volunteer physician and Board member of Doctors of the World Canada.
