John P. Hubbard Award
Brian Hodges Selected by NBME as Recipient of 2012 John P. Hubbard Award
The NBME is pleased to announce that Brian David Hodges, MD, PhD was selected as the recipient of the 2012 John P. Hubbard Award. The award is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the pursuit of excellence in the field of evaluation in medicine. Professor Dame Lesley Southgate, Chair of the 2012 Hubbard Award Committee, announced Dr. Hodges’ selection at the Annual Meeting of the NBME Membership on March 29, 2012.
In presenting the award, Dame Lesley stated: “In recognition of his brilliance and exceptional leadership in evaluation scholarship, I am pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2012 Hubbard Award is Brian Hodges. Dr. Hodges has devoted his professional career to the pursuit of excellence in assessment, which is the essence of the Hubbard Award. Relentless in his efforts to enhance the quality of evaluation locally, nationally and internationally, Dr. Hodges has shown supreme mastery of the field of evaluation and a willingness to share his expertise globally. His academic biography, including wide-ranging publications in the field of evaluation, demonstrates sustained innovation in assessment research. He has presented hundreds of talks, keynote addresses, lectures, workshops, and posters at scholarly conferences and has been honored over 30 times with awards for his educational scholarship. Today we are pleased to add the Hubbard Award to these honors.
“Dr. Hodges brings a restless thoughtfulness to his work in assessment and evaluation through a professional lifetime of asking challenging questions and fostering conversation among medical educators. Through his insightful articulation of the issues, Dr. Hodges brings a new perspective to evaluation and encourages everyone involved in assessment to ask the right questions in order to improve their work.
“Dr. Hodges re-examined the Objective Structured Clinical Examination and provided us with a history of its development and adoption over 30 years. He has confirmed and refuted our collective approach to the OSCE; he has articulated our concerns about self-assessment and professionalism and his research has provided new insights into both topics; and he is contributing significantly to the conversations about competence and ‘incompetence’ in the health professions. Dr. Hodges’s work reaches beyond the boundaries of medicine to include all health professions and it reaches beyond the boundaries of the ‘usual methods’ to explore new applications and new methods. Dr. Hodges is a visionary who has contributed tremendously to our collective understanding of assessment and evaluation.
“Through his leadership of the University of Toronto Wilson Centre for many years, and his new role as Vice President, Education of the University Health Network, Dr. Hodges has cultivated a group of researchers whose focus is research on assessment and the application of theory to practice. He fosters the application of new methodologies to research in evaluation and assessment and pushes us to think beyond medicine. His work has been applied to nursing, social work, veterinary medicine, sociology, dentistry, and pharmacy. He challenges us to think about the notion of competence and its maintenance through assessment. Dr. Hodges implores us to approach assessment and evaluation in a balanced fashion with papers such as ‘Navigating between excessive examination and naïve reliance on self-assessment.’
“In his work, he continues to explore the idea of professionalism and its assessment, and he has recently introduced the concept of ‘discourse’ when considering physician competence. Dr. Hodges is expanding the boundaries of the methodologies used to research assessment methods, as well as the validity and reliability of examinations, and continues to bring fresh insights and new perspectives to the topics of professionalism, self-assessment, performance-based assessment, and expertise.
“The impact that Dr. Hodges has had on assessment and evaluation in North America and throughout the world is nothing short of profound. He has a 20-year history of publication and presentations about assessment; he has mentored dozens of researchers who continue the work he began. In everything he does, Dr. Hodges manages to serve as an example, to recognize the educational possibilities, the ‘teaching moments,’ and to encourage others to benefit from these possibilities.
“The Hubbard Award Committee described Dr. Hodges as a dynamic force in the current trend away from traditional time-based approaches to competency-based approaches in graduate medical education. Dr. Hodges contextualizes what assessment is, including its meaning and implications sociologically. He is a philosopher and social commentator as well as an outstanding medical education and assessment researcher.” Dr. Hodges is Richard and Elizabeth Currie Chair in Health Professions Education Research at the Wilson Centre for Research in Education; Senior Fellow, Massey College; Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto; and Vice-President, Education, University Health Network. The NBME established the Hubbard Award in 1983 in special tribute to the late John P. Hubbard, MD. Honoring Dr. Hubbard as a principal, guiding force of the NBME, this award acknowledges his creative and inspired leadership of the organization during his 25-year tenure as its chief executive. Dr. Hodges deservedly joins the ranks of the distinguished individuals whom the NBME has honored over the years with this prestigious award. His selection as the recipient followed a call for nominations published widely in the spring of 2011. The 2012 Hubbard Award Committee, chaired by Professor Dame Lesley Southgate, included as members Michael Jodoin, PhD, Susan R. Johnson, MD, MS, Kenneth M. Ludmerer, MD, MA, John J. Norcini, PhD, and Patricia N. Whitley-Williams, MD.
Posted April 2, 2012