Professor Keith Adamson joined the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work as an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in August 2017. He holds more than 20 years of progressive senior management experience in clinical, management and professional practice leadership roles, as well as expertise in Clinical Governance at Mackenzie Health, Women’s College Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Centre in Toronto and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. His management roles have expanded from providing a professional practice lens for the Social Work profession to being responsible for the professional practice of other health disciplines. 

Professor Adamson pursues research that seeks to explore innovative pedagogical approaches to interprofessional education and practice, research that explores new roles for social work within a changing healthcare system, as well as research that explores how compassionate care and empathy can be enhanced in social work education through collaboration with service users, clients and their families. Building on his commitment to education for client and family centered care, Professor Adamson developed a social work disability course in collaboration with clients and family members from the disability community and implemented a co-teaching model that represents people with lived experience as experts and holders of authoritative knowledge based on their experience. The pedagogical innovation went further by collaborating with service providers in a group of healthcare organizations to develop a training program that prepared individuals with disabilities and caregivers to co-teach with university instructors – learning how to lecture, facilitate group discussions, address questions and run simulations. Professor Adamson is committed to the spread of this pedagogical approach in professional health education, and travels nationally and internationally to share this work.