Annual Report 2024-2025: MD Program

Submitted by Dr. Carla Garcia, Director, MD Program

The UG Psychiatry team has had a busy year in 2025, with changes across all four years of curriculum. The changes identified below are in response to previously identified gaps in the curriculum that are being addressed under the leadership of Dr. Chloe Leon, our Curriculum Lead.

Foundations (4-week course, 2^nd year MD program)

Week 1

In the pre-clinical Foundations year, a new Introduction to Psychiatry was launched in 2023, after an extensive needs assessment, and collaboration with partners in history of psychiatry and health equity & social justice.  This new week has continued to undergo ongoing quality improvement in response to iterative feedback, and for the 2025 academic year, there is now a new week, Dr. Roisin Byrne working alongside Dr. Chloe Leon, but she will eventually take over entirely.  There are three new lectures that she has developed to introduce students to psychiatry, including introduction to assessment, diagnosis, formulation and treatment.  Students will continue to have online access to previously developed materials related to history and nosology of psychiatry.  Additionally, personality disorders as a topic is returning to clerkship for 2025.  In collaboration with Drs. Carmen Wiebe and Anne Sonley, in response to feedback previously developed modules were removed from the curriculum temporarily, in order to undergo necessary improvements (particularly, in reducing reliance on stereotypes and media depictions of people with possible personality disorders, as this can propagate stigma and reinforce stereotypes).  As a result, Drs. Wiebe and Sonley have updated their previously developed modules, and additionally have created videos themselves instead of relying on movies/TV.  Two scenarios were written and videotaped, using standardized patients; these videos will be incorporated into the online modules. In addition to this, psychiatry has secured an additional hour in the curriculum for a live personality disorder workshop, where students will observe Drs. Wiebe and Sonley demonstrate techniques in validation that are helpful when working with dysregulated individuals.  Furthermore, this will be an opportunity for processing materials in the online modules and allowing for a question & answer period.  Lastly, we have secured a further 2 hours in the curriculum for a child psychiatry workshop. Ensuring alignment with Drs. Byrne, Wiebe and Sonley, Dr. Hannah Klein has been working on developing a lecture that will introduce students to the assessment of children - i.e. considering the child in the context of their world (school, home, friends, community & culture).  An introductory approach to interviewing will be discussed, as will the basics of attachment, and the impact of adverse childhood experiences on youth and adult health (with a focus on early intervention).

Week 3

Dr. Albert Wong leads this week, which primarily focuses on schizophrenia/psychotic disorders.  Feedback from students is that there is opportunity for more material this week.  As such, it has been determined that an Adult ADHD module will be added to this week.  ADHD is covered in various courses, including psychiatry clerkship and pediatrics, but there is nowhere in the curriculum discussing Adult ADHD.  Dr. Christopher Richards-Bentley has developed a lecture that students will be able to access asynchronously during this week

Clerkship (6-week course, 3rd year MD program)

The non-clinical clerkship curriculum went through a thorough review in 2021-2022. In establishing priorities for the new curriculum, careful consideration was given to the existing blueprint of the psychiatry course, with particular emphasis on the domains of mood disorders, anxiety, psychosis, addiction, trauma, and delirium.  Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) themes included Black Health, Indigenous Health and LGBTQ2S+ Health in line with the University of Toronto MD program EDI Action Plan.  Experts in EDI contributed to the development of the curriculum through involvement as consultants, in case writing, editing, and the preparation of resource materials.  A case-based curriculum was developed, with modifications to ensure the curriculum was fostering adaptive expertise (preparing clerks for the complexities of current medical care, as well as the uncertainty of the future.  With support from a Department of Psychiatry Excellence Grant, the curriculum continues to be evaluated, with the view to further understand the impact of the curriculum, as well as for quality improvement.  Quantitative data from all medical students who went through the curriculum from 2022 to 2024 is currently being analyzed, as well as qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with students and faculty.  The data analysis is ongoing, and work accepted for presentation at international conferences (ICAM, AAP).

Additionally, we have been working to support the MD Program’s planned clerkship expansion, and are excited to be welcoming two new clerkship sites in 2027: Michael Garron Hospital and Scarborough Health Network, as well as their respective Site Directors, Dr. Victoria Lee and Dr. Paris Lai.  This has only been possible with the support and wisdom of our other site directors and administrators, especially Dr. Evan Baker and the Mount Sinai Hospital faculty, who have agreed to support these new sites in the transitional year by providing the Seminar based curriculum to their MD Program students.