Canadian Family Physician Editorial Fellow, 2021

We have to be continually jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

Kurt Vonnegut

In 2010, when Canadian Family Physician (CFP) had its first, and until now only, Editorial Fellow,¹ few family medicine journals offered editorial fellowships.

Back then I noted that only 6 medical editing fellowships existed that had a medical degree as a prerequisite. Those were sponsored by JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, CMAJ, American Family Physician, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and the Radiological Society of North America. American Family Physician was the only family medicine journal that offered that kind of training and experience. I suggested it was time that changed.¹

Since then things have changed substantially. Many family medicine journals now offer year-long, part-time editorial fellowships, including Annals of Family Medicine,² Family Medicine,³ and BJGP Open.⁴ The Australian Journal of General Practice⁵ and American Family Physician,⁶ the earliest family medicine journals to provide editorial fellowships, continue to do so.

Family medicine continues to grow and prosper as a discipline. Among the most important developments have been the tremendous growth of family medicine research, education scholarship, and quality improvement in Canada. Canadian Family Physician must strive to match these developments and keep pace with our sister publications in family medicine. One critical way, as I wrote in 2010, is to begin to train future editors, not just for our national journal, but to provide medical editing, reviewing, and writing experiences that will allow family physicians to develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to write for and reach many different audiences.

Thanks to the generous support of the Foundation for Advancing Family Medicine at the College of Family Physicians of Canada, CFP is pleased to be able to support an Editorial Fellow for 2021. In this month’s issue we offer a warm welcome to the 2021 CFP Editorial Fellow, Dr Sarah Fraser.

Dr Fraser is originally from Merigomish, NS. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS, and she trained in family medicine at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. Dr Fraser also has a master’s degree in environmental sciences from McGill University in Montreal, Que, and is enrolled in a master’s program in journalism.

Since 2017, Dr Fraser has been an Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University, where she has taught medical students and residents in various clinical settings. Most recently, as of January 2021, Dr Fraser is also Co-Director of the Medical Humanities Program at Dalhousie University, where she works closely with medical students and faculty on the integration of the humanities into medical training and faculty development.

Dr Fraser’s editing and writing roots run deep and reach back to her earliest days as a medical student, when she won numerous prizes for writing and photography. Readers will be familiar with Dr Fraser’s excellent work as the section editor for and a regular contributor to the Art of Family Medicine,^7,8 as the section editor for the Third Rail⁹ series, and as a contributor to our podcast.¹⁰

Readers will be less familiar with her extensive writing on medical issues and controversies for a general audience on topics as diverse as being a reflective practitioner, for The Medical Post,¹¹ and the purposes and problems with medical jargon, for The Chronicle Herald.¹² She has also published a book of poetry.¹³

During the year, Dr Fraser will continue to edit the Art of Family Medicine and Third Rail, but will learn about all aspects of the journal, from reviewing and editing manuscripts to production. Please join us at CFP in welcoming Dr Fraser.

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