Winter 2025 (Volume 35, Number 4)

Education Committee Update

By Beth Hazel, OLY, MDCM, FRCPC, MM

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This past year the CRA Education Committee has continued to strengthen its commitment to positioning the CRA as the leading provider of rheumatology resources and continuing professional education for our members. We remain committed to proactively addressing their evolving educational needs. In 2025, our key focus areas included optimizing program structures, advancing our processes for assessing and responding to member learning needs, and leadership succession planning.

To better inform program and activity planning, the annual needs assessment was conducted at an earlier time point in the year. This adjustment provided sufficient time to interpret, share, and apply the findings to upcoming initiatives, while also enabling the committee to expand its overarching process for overseeing and coordinating educational priorities. To facilitate this, a new tool was introduced to help streamline educational content delivery, maximize topic breadth, and reduce redundancy across CRA programs. Beginning next year, committees and planning groups will use the new topic matrix tool to guide all educational planning initiatives and ensure alignment with prioritized learning needs.

To capture unperceived learning needs more effectively, the committee launched quarterly pulse surveys. These short, targeted questionnaires are disseminated to members to explore alternative channels for assessing continuing professional development (CPD) needs. The pulse surveys complement the annual needs assessment, enabling a more responsive approach to identifying emerging educational gaps.

This year marked a major advancement in resident programming with the formal consolidation of resident program committees and sub-committees into RheumAcademy, the new overarching framework responsible for delivering a cohesive resident curriculum through the Resident Pre-Course, National Written Rheumatology In-Training Exam (NWRITE) and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) sub-committees. The CRA continues its standing commitment to assessment-driven learning, with the NWRITE, long established with adult programs, and the inaugural pediatric pNWRITE which was successfully launched this year. Since 2021, the CRA has also supported a national virtual OSCE, building on years of in-person delivery at the National Rheumatology Residents Weekend (NRRW).

The CPD Sub-Committee continued to review both internal and external programs, ensuring high standards of educational quality and accreditation consistency. The Postgraduate Sub-Committee remained committed in their development of rheumatology resources, including the development of a National Immunology Curriculum for Rheumatology learners and educators, reflecting the CRA’s commitment to core training enhancements. The CRA LEAdership Program (LEAP) delivered a combination of virtual and in-person programming for the current two-year cohort of future rheumatology leaders.

The Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) remains a cornerstone event for the CRA; the Education Committee continues to contribute to the scientific planning content and support presenter programs at the conference. The committee remains involved in cross-committee collaboration, oversees the Practice Reflection Award program, and recently supported the Mini-Practice Audit Model (mPAM) pilot program.

Finally, in 2025, the committee was delighted to welcome Medha Soowamber as vice-chair, bringing valuable leadership to support long-term succession planning and ensure continuity.

The Education Committee remains committed to delivering relevant, high quality, and coordinated educational opportunities throughout all stages of a rheumatologist’s career. We will evolve our approaches to ensure CRA’s educational offerings remain responsive, inclusive, and aligned with our members’ professional development needs.

Elizabeth M. Hazel, OLY, MDCM, FRCPC, MM
Division Director, Rheumatology,
McGill University Health Centre
Assistant Dean, PGME, CBME
Associate Professor of Medicine,
Division of Rheumatology, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec