First and foremost, many thanks to all the residents for all their hard work on their research projects and for their excellent presentations. The depth and breadth of research being conducted in the city was certainly highlighted with new updates on patient centred care, a greater appreciation of patient perspectives towards improving our orthopaedic counseling, emerging fields of study in understanding microbiome, leveraging machine learning, as well as evaluating the impacts of COVID-19 on surgical education.

Dr. Michelle Ghert provided an excellent talk on issues and strategies to consider in embarking on pivotal multicentre clinical trials. Collaboration, resilience, and continued focus on the importance of the question to be addressed resonated. In many regards, these same principles apply to our current fight towards resolving the pandemic. Special thanks to Dr. Ghert for contributing towards the success of our research day. We look forward to nurturing ongoing as well as establishing new collaborative opportunities between our respective universities and hospital centres.

Please join us in congratulating our award recipients this year. Dr. Amit Anand (supervised by Dr. Jihad Abouali) won the T. R. Sullivan Award for Best Overall Research Paper presentation for his work on “Perceptions and Attitudes towards post-operative pain and analgesia in Orthopaedics: Implications for the Development of a Patient-Centred Approach to post-operative Pain and Opiod Prescribing”. Dr. Matthew Florczynski (supervised by Dr. Heather Baltzer) was the recipient of the Dr. Robin Richards Upper Extremity Research award for his work on “Factors associated with early and late digital revascularization and replantation failure”. Drs. Aouod Agenor and Jason Lam also received honorable mention for their work on “Gut Microbiome Modulation and Fracture Healing” and “The Achilles study on developing a novel measurement of ruptured tendoachilles as related to function”, respectively.

Thank you to our clinical faculty who ran our resident education sessions, as well as to our junior and newly recruited faculty scientists (Drs. Timothy Burkart, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education; Dr. Adele Changoor, Department of Surgery, and Dr. Stan Hamstra, Department of Surgery) who participated in our program today and to whom we welcome into our orthopaedic family.

While we all continue to navigate through Wave 2 together, we would like to wish you all the best of health as well as a safe and enjoyable, yet socially distanced, upcoming winter and holiday season.

All the best and until soon,