2027 Annual Meeting Program

Prepare Your Abstract Submission

Join us in reaffirming our shared dedication to excellence in lifelong learning by showcasing your scholarship, sharing lessons learned, and inspiring the community. The abstract selection committee will accept research and best practice submissions for oral and poster presentations in the following categories:

• RICME - Works in Exploratory Stages, In Progress, Completed Studies

• Best Practices and Innovations

• Program Evaluation

• Evidence and Data Informed Perspectives/Forums

• *NEW* Advancing CPD/CE Practice

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2027 Program Details

Preliminary Program (PDF)

Barbara Barnes Plenary Presentation

From Compliance to Culture: CPD as a Catalyst for Integrity, Growth, and Equity in the Health Professions

Jamiu Busari, MD, MHPE, PhD, CCPE, FRCPC

Read More about Dr. Busari

Continuing professional development (CPD) in the health professions is continuously evolving. Once defined primarily by attendance, credit accumulation, and periodic updates in clinical knowledge, CPD now focuses on meaningful, lifelong practice—one that advances clinical excellence while fostering ethical leadership, reflective practice, mentorship, well-being, and inclusive professional cultures.

This keynote will explore why this evolution matters. In rapidly changing healthcare systems, professionals need more than technical competence to thrive and provide outstanding care. They require environments that recognize growth, encourage collaboration, and safeguard the integrity of professional development. Unfortunately, too often, professional advancement is undermined by career sabotaging: a pattern of malicious envy expressed through subtle exclusion, vague justifications, reputational harm, withheld opportunities, and collective silence. Furthermore, survey data and lived experiences reveal the profound personal and institutional consequences of these hidden practices.

By examining the evolution of CPD alongside this often unspoken reality, this keynote will invite the audience to view professional development not simply as an individual obligation but as a shared ethical responsibility. It will illuminate the conditions that allow hidden injustice to persist and present a compelling vision for leaders, educators, and professional bodies on how to build cultures in which CPD reinforces integrity. It will highlight how mentorship can be purposeful, compassion is valued, and how every professional can gain a genuine opportunity to learn, contribute, and rise.

Plenary Presentation

Emotional Regulation: New Strategies for Individuals and Organizations

Rachel Thibeault, O.C., Ph.D, FCAOT

An occupational therapist who holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in psychology, Rachel was for nearly three decades a professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Ottawa, Canada. She has developed expertise in psychological resilience, Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) and peer support in complex situations such as conflict and post-conflict areas, and has worked worldwide as a clinician, researcher and trainer. In recognition of her contributions, she has received the title of Officer of the Order of Canada, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Canadian Society for International Health and Honorary Degrees. Now a consultant, she provides training and assistance to a broad range of agencies, from medical bodies and governmental organizations to corporations and NGOs. Since 2022, she supports war survivors and healthcare providers in Ukraine.

Plenary Presentation

Beyond Credits and Competencies: Continuing Professional Development as the Linchpin of Learning Health Systems

France Légaré, C.Q., B. Sc. Arch, MD, MSc, PhD, CCMF, FCMF

Learning Health Systems (LHS) are designed to continuously generate, mobilize, and apply knowledge to improve care. They rely on real-time data, feedback loops, quality improvement processes, implementation strategies, and meaningful partnerships with patients and communities. Yet one essential component is frequently underestimated: continuing professional development (CPD).

Drawing on over 35 years of clinical practice as a family physician and more than three decades of research in shared decision making, knowledge mobilization, implementation science, and healthcare innovation, this plenary will argue that CPD is the linchpin of every Learning Health System. CPD is the mechanism through which evidence becomes practice, innovations become routine care, and learning translates into impact and sustainable improvement.

Using examples from a large body of work that includes the development and evaluation of theory-informed evidence-based CPD interventions, implementation of shared decision-making programs in diverse clinical settings, creation of the CPD-Reaction instrument, large-scale pragmatic trials, and recent work on spreading and scaling health innovations, this session will explore how CPD can drive measurable changes in clinician behaviour, team performance, patient engagement, and health system outcomes.

Participants will be invited to rethink CPD not as a standalone educational activity but as a strategic system function connecting education, implementation, quality improvement, patient partnership, and organizational learning. The session will conclude with a vision for the next generation of CPD science and practice in an increasingly interconnected world.

Dr. France Légaré is a family physician, Full Professor in the Department of Family and Emergency Medicine at Université Laval, and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Shared Decision Making and Knowledge Mobilization. She is also Co-Director of the Learning Health System (LHS) Core of the Quebec SPOR SUPPORT Unit and a clinical researcher at VITAM Centre de recherche en santé durable and the CHU de Québec Research Centre. Internationally recognized for her contributions to continuing professional development (CPD), shared decision making, implementation science, and knowledge mobilization, Dr. Légaré has dedicated more than 30 years to understanding how health professionals learn, change practice, and improve patient care. She has led pioneering work on theory-informed evidence-based CPD interventions, implementation of shared decision making in clinical practice, and development of innovative approaches to measuring behaviour change among healthcare professionals, including the CPD-Reaction instrument. Her research has produced more than 500 peer-reviewed publications and has informed educational programs, clinical practice, health policy, and system transformation initiatives in Canada and internationally.