I am very pleased to announce that Professor Dawn E. DeWitt BA, MSc, MD, FACP, FRACP, FRCPC, will be honoured by the American College of Physicians with advancement to Mastership. The award will be presented during ACP’s annual Convocation ceremony in April 2014 in Orlando, FL.
Mastership is one of the highest honours bestowed by the College. ACP Bylaws state that Masters shall be Fellows who have been selected because of “personal character, positions of honour, contributions towards furthering the purposes of the ACP, eminence in practice or in medical research, or other attainments in science or in the art of medicine.” Masters are highly accomplished individuals who are distinguished by the excellence and significance of their contributions to medicine. Of the College’s 1,238 Masters, less than 8% are female physicians. Dr. DeWitt is the second Fellow in the BC Chapter to be advanced to Mastership.
Dr. DeWitt is a Professor of Medicine; Regional Associate Dean, Vancouver Fraser; and Associate Dean, MD Undergraduate Education at the Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia. As the Foundation Chair of the Rural Health Academic Centre, Melbourne Medical School and Clinical Dean, Rural Clinical School, she led the development of Australia’s first purpose-built inter-professional learner-centred teaching clinic. Her team won the Melbourne Medical School and University of Melbourne Program Innovation in Education Awards in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In addition to organizing state meetings and organizing sessions and speaking at Annual ACP meetings, she is a co-author of the ACP “Teaching in the Office” book, and has edited, authored and reviewed for MKSAP. She is a past Chair of the Step 3 NBME Chronic Illness Committee. Her interests include addressing rural workforce shortages and health disparities, career choice, and diabetes. She was a co-Investigator on a recent NHMRC grant on the “Efficacy, acceptability and feasibility of laparoscopic gastric banding surgery as a treatment for type 2 diabetes in Indigenous Australians”. Her systematic review of insulin use in the ambulatory setting (JAMA 2003) is still cited by the American Diabetes Association guidelines as one of a few “excellent reviews” on the subject. Widely recognized as an outstanding clinician and teacher, she was peer-voted one of the “Best Doctors in America” in 2002, before moving to practice in rural Australia, and now in Vancouver, Canada.
Dr. DeWitt is an outstanding physician and educator who has made significant contributions to academic medicine, and is highly deserving of this honour. Please join me in congratulating Dawn on this achievement.
Graydon S. Meneilly, MD, FRCPC, FACP
Governor, American College of Physicians, British Columbia Chapter