Hiroshi profiles a Clinician Educator from Toronto, Canada
Dr. Suzan Schneeweiss (@SSchneeweiss) is a pediatric emergency physician, practicing at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, for the past 22 years. Her job profile has changed over the years. When she first started practice, the majority of her time was devoted to clinical work with a small amount of protected time for non-clinical activities such as teaching and research. Currently, she is a Clinician Educator with about 50% protected time.
Suzan is currently the Director for Education for the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. In this role, she overseas the divisional education activities, which has over 300 trainees on an annual basis. She is the chair of the annual Pediatric Emergency Medicine Conference and runs a number of other courses, including a Pediatric Emergency Procedural Sedation Course.
Dr. Schneeweiss is also involved in teaching at the undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education levels. Her clinical areas of interest are in pain management, sedation and concussions. She is the Director for Academic Development at the University of Toronto Office of Continuing Professional Development in the Faculty of Medicine. Finally, she is a Continuing Professional Development Educator for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.
Suzan’s week varies greatly depending on her clinical emergency schedule. She does about 1 – 2 shifts per week in the emergency department at SickKids (each shift is 8 – 10 hours). Her shifts vary from week to week and may be day, evening, nights or weekends. Her schedule comes out far in advance, so she schedules her other duties around her emergency schedule. She blocks off, one day a week for her CPD role at University of Toronto. Her Royal College role varies in that she will spend more time some weeks and less time in other weeks. The rest of her time is mostly spent in education and administration. A small proportion of her time is devoted to research or quality improvement endeavors. She will take on 1 – 2 small projects per year.
Suzan feels it is challenging to juggle the different roles. She tries to allocate specific time to different roles, which generally works, but sometimes she has to be flexible as issues arise.
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