Summer 2018 (Volume 28, Number 2)

Awards, Appointments, and Accolades

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Dr. Kam Shojania

I (Dr. Kam Shojania) was honoured to have received the UBC Fay R. Dirks Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2017. I have been teaching medical students and residents for more than twenty years and am fortunate to have had outstanding teaching mentors and colleagues at UBC. Teaching is an important facet of our careers. Teaching forces us to keep up to date and improves our patient care. The interactions with trainees often result in important research questions. Our trainees later become our colleagues, and the bond that was forged by teaching them can last decades.

One piece of advice I have for my teaching colleagues is that you don’t have to teach around a case with interesting clinical findings. Often the best and most memorable teaching moments can come from difficult patient encounters and our own mistakes.

Dr. Bob Offer

Having spent my career in full-time patient care, the success and gratitude of patients is the most valued reward I (Dr. Bob Offer) could personally have imagined. My career has been very patient-centric, whether it be the patient in front of me or the need to bring about policy changes when these are required for patient care. For the latter I count as many failures as successes, so it came as a genuine surprise when I was presented with the 2017 Wallace Wilson Leadership Award by the UBC Medical Alumni Association. Nominees are judged on leadership and ethics.

While I have been blessed with many opportunities, great mentors and colleagues during my 49 years since graduation, I had considered myself less a leader than an advocate for best care. Over the years I served as Chief of Staff, President of Medical Staff, a member of community boards for arts, music, and sports, and medical advisor and director of the BC and Yukon Arthritis Society, as well as two terms on the CRA Board of Directors. My proudest achievements relate to developing the multidisciplinary arthritis program in Penticton which served as the main resource for the BC interior for many years, being a founding member of the Penticton High Schools' Scholarship and Bursary Foundation which raised more than one million dollars, and my 11 years managing and coaching an underprivileged girls’ soccer team. Meeting community needs also spurred a BC Interior osteoporosis program and a fibromyalgia management program. From 2002 to June 2018, I initially chaired and remained committed to the BC PharmaCare Committee which adjudicates requests for biologic drugs, work that has been very worthwhile for individual patients and in breaking down the formidable barriers which formerly existed between the Ministry of Health and physicians. It is evident by this award that patient care and community medicine are valued, just as I value the colleagues and faculty members who have been so helpful during my career… a huge thank you to you all!