Dr. Meredith Young, Associate Professor in the Institute of Health Sciences Education at McGill University, puts a feather in her cap this November after having been invited among 12 others to participate in the inaugural Karolinksa Prize in Medical Education (KIPRIME) Fellows Program.
The Fellows will come together for a one-week residency in Stockholm late this November to benefit from mentorship from previous Karolinska Prize winners. The intention is to offer this Fellows Program every two years.
The Karolinska Prize in Medical Education is one of the highest honours in health professions education (HPE). The 2018 prize winner was Dr. Lorelei Lingard, a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and cross-appointed in the Faculty of Education at Western University in London, Ontario in Canada.
“I am thrilled and honoured to have been chosen, and I’m very much looking forward to getting to know the members of my cohort of fellows and the opportunities to meet, and be mentored, by the previous Karolinska Prize winners,” said Dr. Young. “I'm very excited about all components of the fellowship - when else do you get to hang out with some of the best and brightest in the world in HPE research? Not only to meet them, but allowed to spend dedicated time with the Karolinska Prize winners and fellows. I have the intention of learning as much as I can!”
Dr. Young earned her PhD in cognitive psychology from McMaster University in 2009 studying how individuals (both individuals with and without medical expertise) think through a variety of complex problems in medicine. More specifically, she studied the intersection of more intuitive decision-making and more structured, rule-based reasoning.
Her current work centers on three main axes and research in each axis spans from theoretical work on key concepts to pragmatic examinations of educational issues. The three areas of research are:
1) Issues related to reasoning or decision-making in health
2) Issues of validity and assessment in HPE
3) Issues related to the ways we conduct research in Health Professions Education.
As for what she hopes to gain from the Fellows Program, Dr. Young said “I hope to learn much more about different approaches to HPE research, strategic science communication, career pathways, the state of science in HPE, expand and enrich my programs of research, and receive career mentorship.”