Fiona Webster

Biography

Fiona Webster is an Education Scientist in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at the University of Toronto. She trained in institutional ethnography (IE) under feminist sociologist Dr. Dorothy Smith. Her doctoral work explored how a ‘best practice’ is developed, translated, and taken up in medical practice across various sites in the province of Ontario. This work made visible some of the assumptions and hidden priorities underlying the current emphasis on translating scientific knowledge in medicine into practice. 

Research Interest

Since then, Fiona has worked extensively as an embedded scientist in acute care settings including neurology, orthopedic surgery, public health and women’s health. She has also engaged in policy development as the Assistant Director of Knowledge Translation at the Institutes of Circulatory and Respiratory Health (ICRH) and Population and Public Health (IPPH). Her current research program focuses on issues such as the hidden curriculum; the sociological organization of knowledge; and the concept of the “good patient”.  Fiona is cross-appointed to the Departments of Surgery, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) and the Institute of Medical Science (IMS) where she teaches two graduate courses in qualitative research methods and one in knowledge translation. She is also an Academic Fellow of the Centre for Critical Qualitative Research in Health (CQ) at the University of Toronto.