Dr. Cathy MacLean

Dr. Cathy MacLean received her MD from Dalhousie University in 1985 and followed with her family medicine residency there and entered community full scope practice in Moncton, NB. She moved to academic family medicine at the University of Western Ontario in 1992 where she became Undergraduate Family Medicine Director. In 1997, she took the same role at Dalhousie. From 2007 to 2012, Dr. MacLean was Professor and Head of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Calgary and was Chair at Memorial following this. In January, 2017 Dr. Cathy MacLean became the Director of Faculty Development (FD) for the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. MacLean has completed a Masters in Clinical Science in Family Medicine at Western University and later received a Masters in Business Administration from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. She has been active in teaching and research throughout her career. The highlight of her research has been working with Dr. Pat McGrath on the Strongest Families program which has won national recognition for health services innovation. Dr. MacLean has been involved with the College of Family Physicians of Canada for many years and was national President of the College of Family Physicians of Canada in 2009/2010. She served as chair of the national Patient Education Committee until 2018 and served on the Patients’ Medical Home Steering Committee until 2019. In her leadership roles, she has successfully implemented initiatives for an alternate funding plan, expansions in both UG and PG family medicine programs, implementation of Triple C curriculum and new distributed models to enhance recruitment and retention of family physicians, improved matches to family medicine as a career choice, introduced inter-professional team based care in microsystems and has started a Patients Advisory Committee within the Patients Medical Home model. Her primary interests are in systems transformation using the “quadruple aim” targets and meeting societal needs in a more coordinated and accountable primary care system. She continues to be interested in research and scholarship in medical education focusing on physician behaviour change.

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