Past event: EDID Workshop Series: Positionality, Power, and Practice: Navigating Identity and Power in Medical Education and Clinical Care

Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM

This interactive workshop introduces medical educators to concepts including, social identity, privilege, power, oppression, positionality, intersectionality, and implicit bias, and explores how these concepts shape both educational practice and clinical care.

Participants will engage in guided individual reflection and facilitated collective dialogue to examine how their own social positioning influences curriculum design, teaching interactions, assessment practices, and relationships with learners. The session also explicitly extends this reflection into clinical contexts, inviting participants to consider how positionality and power shape patient–provider relationships, interprofessional teams, and healthcare spaces.

The workshop concludes with a practical discussion focused on navigating power imbalances in medical education and clinical practice, with attention to ethical responsibility, professional accountability, and creating safer, more equitable learning and care environments.

Learning Objectives:

1. Examine key concepts related to social identity, power, privilege, oppression, positionality, and intersectionality within the contexts of medical education and healthcare practice.
2. Reflect critically on their own social identities and professional roles, and how these intersect with institutional and societal power structures.
3. Analyze how positionality shapes teaching and assessment practices, learner–educator relationships, and clinical decision-making and patient interactions.
4. Identify ways in which power imbalances emerge in classrooms, clinical learning environments, and patient care settings.
5. Discuss strategies for navigating and mitigating power imbalances in curriculum design and delivery; supervision, evaluation, and feedback; and clinical encounters and interprofessional collaboration.

Workshop facilitated by:

Ashley McKeown (she/her)
(Lecturer and Teaching Fellow – Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences)
(Co-Chair DARAO (Decolonization Anti-Racism Anti-Oppression Committee – Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University)