Named after Dr. Donald Boudreau, an associate professor at the Institute of Health Sciences Education (IHSE), who helped create the Physician Apprenticeship Program, the JD Boudreau Award recognizes a current or recent Osler Fellow who demonstrates excellent mentoring qualities, pedagogy, and attributes promoted by the Physicianship Program and the Physician Apprenticeship course.
But what, exactly, is an Osler Fellow? Recruited from all specialties in medicine based on their reputation of being good physicians and teachers, Osler Fellows support and mentor a group of six students during the four-year MDCM curriculum as part of the longitudinal Physicianship component. And what is Physicianship? “Learning to be a doctor,” states Dr. Moroz, a practising family doctor, an educator who teaches Transition to Clinical Practice, and a sports medicine specialist at the McGill Sport Medicine Clinic. He also supports Gymnastics Canada and Water Polo Canada out of the Institut National du Sport du Québec Sports Medicine Clinic. This summer, he accompanied Team Canada to the Paris Olympic Games.
Osler Fellows explore a wide range of topics with their six mentees. Work-life balance, burnout prevention, and personal boundaries are some of them. “Doctors are leaders in society,” explains Dr. Moroz. “We give back all the time. But how much can we give? And what does it mean to be a doctor outside of the clinic or the hospital: are you always a doctor? Do you talk to patients about their treatment at the grocery store?” Mentors also guide students through societal phenomena like vaccine hesitancy or pressures around masking, ethical explorations of topics like medical assistance in dying, and more personal scenarios such as how to react to anger. For Dr. Moroz, who admires his students’ high standards and exceptional qualities, it’s important that his mentees remember to care for themselves, too.
During these scenarios, students can practice telling someone they have cancer, interacting with a grieving person, communicating with someone who doesn’t speak the same language, or experiencing a patient’s anger. “They leave the room sweating, but they’re still alive. They did some good and some bad, but they got to get better,” Dr. Moroz comments. “It’s all about what students experience and how they learn from it. That’s the beauty of it.”
For Dr. Moroz, becoming an Osler Fellow is all about giving back to his community. “This includes my patients, but also McGill. This is why I teach and mentor the next generation. Participating in the Osler program as a student made me into the doctor I am today; I wanted to give that to my group.”
Receiving the JD Boudreau Award is an honour and a privilege, says Dr. Moroz. Above all else, he sees it as a testament of his mentees’ “selflessness, openness, and willingness to have deep conversations while also doing the hardest thing they could be doing: studying, trying to have a life, being a son, being a girlfriend, being a student – all those things that they do outside of learning medicine.”
