Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, PhD. Dr. Iqbal has immense passion for health professions education, which led him to pursue a full-time career as an educationist. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas. His primary areas of interests in health professions education are competency-based medical education, faculty development, evidence-based practices, assessment, psychometric analysis, educational psychology, and small group pedagogy. In the past, he was actively involved in curricular and assessment reforms, faculty development activities and student research projects. In addition, he has also provided consultation to postgraduate residency and vocational training programs in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Iqbal also participated as a facilitator in certificate and master’s degree program in health professions education.
KEEP Lab projects involved in:
- Evolution of evidence-based practice: evaluating the contribution of individual and contextual factors to optimize patient care
- Identifying how contextual factors in the workplace influence how Canadian health care professionals enact, maintain and develop their core professional competencies
Naila Kuhlmann, PhD completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas and Dr. Stefanie Blain-Morae. Dr. Kuhlmann obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia in 2020. She studied a mouse model of Parkinson's disease, using techniques such as neuronal cultures, optogenetics and slice electrophysiology to examine changes in neural transmission and circuitry that could underlie the disease. She has been involved in multiple community outreach projects throughout her studies, including co-founding the Green Labs Initiative at the Neuro, and joining fellow students in starting a podcast, "AMiNDR: A Month in Neurodegenerative Disease Research". Dr. Kuhlmann found a way to combine her interests in the performing arts (particularly dance and circus) and art-science collaborations by starting the Piece of Mind collective, a group of neuroscientists and artists finding creative ways of representing scientific research through movement and music. This also formed the basis of her postdoc which was a performance arts-based knowledge translation project on Parkinson's disease and dementia — bringing together researchers, artists and the stakeholder community to co-create performance pieces based on scientific data and lived experience.
Fadi Al Zoubi, BSc. PT, MSc. PT, MSc. Rehabilitation, PhD. Rehabilitation. Dr. Al Zoubi completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas, in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. Dr. Al Zoubi's research focused on developing a robust measurement approach for constructs around evidence-based practice including practice, individual variants (e.g. knowledge, attitudes, confidence, behaviours) and contextual factors (e.g. resources). In September 2017, he was awarded the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal (CRIR) bursary for postdoctoral fellows, to develop a measure for evidence-based practice using modern measurement model, namely Rasch model.
Owis Eilayyan, B.Sc. PT, M.Sc, PT, PhD. Dr. Eilayyan completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. André Bussières and Dr. Aliki Thomas, in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. Dr. Eilayyan’s research focused on improving healthcare services in different chronic conditions: Low Back Pain (LBP), Stroke, Asthma, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). His work focused on 1) addressing the challenges of using patient reported outcomes (e.g. health-related quality of life) in LBP and COPD, including the development of patients’ health outcomes questionnaires using a modern method (i.e. IRT), 2) identifying the predictors of health perception in different chronic conditions using SEM, and 3) translating knowledge from research to clinical practice.
David John Lemay, PhD, is an educational psychologist, who completed his postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Medical Education, under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas. Dr. Lemay’s research focused on student and faculty approaches to learning in the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University and the use of knowledge and evidence in the clinical supervisory relationship. His areas of interest include, communicative activity in social learning situations, the study of indexicality in sociolinguistic interaction, technology adoption, learner-centered instruction, and statistical learning.
Marie-Christine Hallé, M.P.O., Ph.D., is a speech-language pathologist. She completed her postdoctoral fellow training in knowledge translation under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas and André Bussières at McGill University. Dr. Hallé’s postdoctoral research aimed to better understand how to promote the uptake of evidence-based practice and clinical practice guidelines among rehabilitation professionals, from the educational to the clinical setting. Her research interest is to explore and promote professional practice change among speech-language pathologists with regards to the inclusion of significant others in post-stroke aphasia rehabilitation. In September 2016, she was awarded a Richard and Edith Strauss Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medicine, from McGill’s Faculty of Medicine, to undertake a mixed methods research project aligned with her interests in knowledge translation, post-stroke aphasia and inclusion of significant others.
Chantal Cassis, MD, FRCPC, is a licensed Hematologist who has been practicing since 2009 at the Jewish General Hospital. She has an interest in medical education and is also the program director for the McGill University Adult Hematology Training Program since 2013. She completed her Masters of Medical Health Education at McGill University through the University of Cincinnati, under the supervision of Dr. Aliki Thomas and Dr. Robert Harper, EdD. Her research thesis explored the supports and barriers to evidence-based medicine in cancer care through a knowledge translation lens.
Carly Goodman, M.Sc. OT(c), erg, is a certified occupational therapist who holds a B.Sc. Honors Psychology degree from the University of Western Ontario and a M.Sc. in Occupational Therapy (2013) from McMaster University. She has worked as an occupational therapist in diverse practice settings in the greater Toronto area and more recently in California, U.S.A. Her previous research experiences include an internship and clinical research assistant position at Baycrest Geriatric Hospital in Toronto. Her research interests include implementation of knowledge translation initiatives, and evidence-based practices in mental health as well as chronic conditions for adult/older adult populations. Carly helped coordinate the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) funded, 4-year study that explores the perspectives and experiences of evidence-based practice for new occupational therapy and physical therapy graduates across Canada.
Heather Owens, M.Sc. holds a Masters in Music from the University of Edinburgh and a postgraduate diploma in Music Therapy. Heather specialized in clinical practice and research in therapeutic interventions with music for people with brain injury and stroke. In 1995 she completed a Masters in Public Health and Health Services Research from the University of Aberdeen. On moving to Canada in 2004, she continued to work as a research music therapist before going on to spend 5 years as research manager for a pan-Canadian healthcare project on implementing and disseminating evidence-based guidelines. Heather assisted Dr. Aliki Thomas, Director of Research at the CISSS-Laval CRIR-Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital Research Centre in Laval, Québec. Her interest is primarily in the development and delivery of effective knowledge translation strategies for evidence-based practice, and research into monitoring their uptake in clinical practice.
Publications:
Cassis, C., Al Zoubi, F., Owens, H., Thomas, A. Identifying supports and barriers to the implementation of an educational intervention to promote residents' use of Evidence-Based Medicine: a knowledge translation study (submitted)
Conferences:
Eilayyan, O, Thomas, A, Hallé, M-C, Ahmed, S, Davis, C, Jacobs, C, Schneider, MJ, Tibbles, AC, Lee, J, Owens, H, Al-Zoubi, F, Myrtos, D, Meckamail, C, Long, C & Bussières, AB (2018) Implementing guidelines into chiropractic teaching clinics: A mixed methods pilot randomized controlled study. Guidelines International Network conference, Manchester, UK
Bussières, A, Maiers, M, Grondin, D, Brockusen S, Lafrenière, D, Owens, H (2016) Identifying, Selecting and Training Opinion Leaders to Promote the Use of Best Practices in the Chiropractic Profession in Canada. World Federation of Chiropractic Education Conference, Montréal, Oct 2016
Purdie, H., Enriquez-Rosas, A., Fontaine, F., Langlois F. et Hébert, S. (2011) Effets comparatifs de la musicothérapie active et de l’écoute de la musique sur la cognition et l’humeur après un accident vasculaire cérébral. (Comparison of the effects of active music therapy and music listening on the cognition and mood of people with stroke.) Journée Scientifique CRIUGM/CAREC « Mobilité, Mouvement et Veillissement », Montreal.
Sarah Heinzle, M.Sc., holds a Master’s degree in Kinesiology and Health Sciences. She attended York University for her M.Sc. and Carleton University for her undergraduate degree.
Sarah assisted in coordinating several research projects. She also worked in collaboration with McGill's Person Centred Health Informatics (PCHI) lab.