PhD student Peter Sheffield places second in student poster competition at the Institute for Pandemics Interdisciplinary Symposium

FIFSW PhD student Peter Sheffield won second place in the student poster competition at the University of Toronto Institute for Pandemics symposium held April 18.

2024 Interdisciplinary Symposium, on April 18th, took place in the historic Great Hall of Hart House on the St. George campus of the University of Toronto and online via Zoom webinar. The theme of this year’s theme was “Reimagining Response & Preparedness for future Public Health Emergencies.”

Sheffield’s poster shared the results of a study he co-authored with Associate Professor Rachelle Ashcroft and others on the barriers and facilitators to primary health care’s involvement in vaccination efforts for COVID-19. The study examined the role that primary health care teams played in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and how to optimize their involvement when distributing vaccines in future pandemics.

Sheffield’s research interests include interdisciplinary primary care, contextual interventions for healthcare provider well-being, and the overlap and interplay between well-being and burnout, moral distress, and resilience in healthcare settings. His career as a social worker in primary care directly informs his desire to understand what thriving healthcare organizations, patients, and providers do – and how their practices can be shared.

Sheffield is an alumnus of TUTOR-PHC (Transdisciplinary Understanding and Training on Research – Primary Healthcare), the only interdisciplinary primary care research training program in Canada. He also held an inaugural trainee fellowship with the Patient Expertise in Research Collaboration (PERC) at McMaster University from 2023-2024. As a clinician, Sheffield has provided invited trainings in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Wilfrid Laurier University and The Ontario Association of Social Workers, and workshop facilitation for the University of Toronto’s Interfaculty Pain Curriculum.

Sheffield’s recent research activities include qualitative analyses of the role of interdisciplinary primary care in facilitating Ontario’s vaccination strategy, and a mixed-methods exploration into the role of shared mental models of crisis intervention amongst interdisciplinary team members in primary care.

Related:

• Creating a National Vision and Building Capacity for the Role of Social Work in Primary Care
• The pandemic forced health-care providers to move to virtual appointments. Rachelle Ashcroft’s research with both providers and patients offers critical insights for the future
• How primary health care teams are providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic