Leadership Committee

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Committee Overview 

The CAEP Leadership Committee supports the development of leadership capacity within Canadian emergency medicine by fostering collaboration, mentorship, scholarship, and practical leadership development opportunities for emergency physicians across academic, community, rural, and remote settings. 

The committee’s proposed mission is to support the mission of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) by fostering excellence in Emergency Medicine leadership across Canada through advocacy, collaboration, education, and the advancement of current and future emergency medicine leaders. 

The committee’s proposed objectives include: 

• Creating a national community of practice and reference network for emergency medicine leaders  

• Creating and sharing opportunities and resources for leadership development within the emergency medicine community  

• Providing leadership expertise to the Canadian emergency medicine community  

• Promoting the training and development of emergency medicine leaders across practice settings  

• Working collaboratively with the CAEP Board and broader CAEP community to support leadership initiatives and activities  
  

Key Achievements & Highlights 

2026 Academic Symposium 

A major focus of the committee’s work this year was supporting development of the 2026 CAEP Academic Symposium, titled Leading Well in Complex Times: Delivering Practical Tools to Help Emergency Leaders and Systems Thrive. (caepconference.ca) 

The committee helped support the scholarly groundwork for the symposium, including: 

• Helping assemble leadership teams and working groups  

• Supporting development of the symposium structure and thematic pillars  

• Facilitating national collaboration across sites and leadership groups  

• Assisting with development of surveys and scholarly initiatives that will inform future publications and position statements  
  

The symposium includes three major focus areas: 

1. Building sustainable leadership and teams  

2. Understanding and strengthening leader well-being  

3. Psychological safety in complex healthcare environments  

CAEP 2026 Leadership Track 

Under the leadership of Carolyn Snider, the committee contributed to development of a strong and diverse Leadership Track for the CAEP 2026 Conference in Winnipeg. 

Programming themes include: 

·       Wellness and sustainable leadership  

·       Administrative and operational leadership  

·       Arts and humanities in medicine  

·       Social medicine  

·       Peer mentorship  

·       Innovative models of care  

The leadership track received a high level of engagement and proposal submissions, helping shape a broad and high-quality program reflective of leadership challenges and innovations across Canadian emergency medicine. 

Paul Hannam Leadership Award 

The committee continued its involvement in the review and selection process for the Paul Hannam Memorial Award for Emerging Leadership in Emergency Medicine, which recognizes early-career emergency physicians who demonstrate outstanding leadership, mentorship, collaboration, advocacy, and commitment to compassionate patient care in the spirit of Dr. Paul Hannam’s legacy. The award continues to represent an important collaboration between CAEP and SREMI.  The recipient will be recognized at both the CAEP Conference and the EDAC conference. 

Governance and Committee Renewal 

The committee undertook work to modernize its Terms of Reference (TOR) to better align with the committee’s evolving role within CAEP. 

Proposed revisions include: 

• Clarification of the committee’s mission and objectives  

• Development of structured membership categories and term limits  

• Increased emphasis on representation from academic, community, rural, remote, and emerging leaders  

• Formalization of governance and succession planning processes  
  

Challenges & Opportunities 

Challenges 

• Balancing ambitious national initiatives with volunteer committee capacity  

• Coordinating multicentre collaboration across jurisdictions  

• Maintaining momentum for leadership development initiatives in a busy clinical environment  

• Financial and logistical challenges associated with leadership retreat and CPD programming  
  

Opportunities 

• Continued development and collaborations of leadership CPD and mentorship initiatives  

• Plan to increase engagement of emerging leaders  

• Further collaboration with partner organizations  
  

Looking Ahead (2026–2027) 

Key priorities for the coming year include: 

• Successful delivery of the 2026 Academic Symposium and Leadership Track at CAEP26  

• Completion and dissemination of symposium scholarly outputs and position statements  

• Continued exploration of leadership CPD and leadership training initiatives and collaborations  

• Implementation of updated committee Terms of Reference  

• Review and renewal of committee membership to align with the updated governance structure and membership categories  

As part of this renewal process, the committee plans to transition from a historically organic membership structure toward a more structured and sustainable model that supports leadership succession planning, broader representation, and opportunities for new member engagement.