2026 CHES Celebration of Scholarship
The Centre for Health Education Scholarship will host the 16th annual CHES Celebration of Scholarship on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at The University of British Columbia’s Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre. This event is an opportunity for the CHES community to showcase and share their work and celebrate the accomplishments of the health professions education scholarship network.
Program & Call for Abstracts & Registration
Please click here to reference the 2025 CHES Celebration of Scholarship event program.
The Call for Abstract will open on April 1, 2026.
Registration will open on August 4, 2026.
Plenary Speaker
Gordon Page Invited Lecture
Dr. Sayra Cristancho, Associate Professor, Dept. of Surgery and Dept. of Anatomy & Cell Biology Senior Scientist, Centre for Education Research & Innovation (CERI)
Title: Brittle Threshold: Understanding the Limits of Adaptive Actions
Abstract: Healthcare systems often treat crisis performance as proof of resilience. Teams stretch, improvise, and keep care moving under strain. Over time, this capacity to adapt has become a quiet success story that is celebrated, studied, and increasingly expected. Across my empirical work on interprofessional teamwork in high-pressure environments and community-initiated crisis response, one pattern repeats. Systems keep functioning through people’s absorption of strain.
This keynote introduces Brittle Threshold: the zone where coping becomes fragile, as the adaptations that sustained performance can no longer absorb additional load. In crisis work, systems do not fail because people stop adapting. They fail when adaptation reaches the Brittle Threshold. Naming this threshold matters because it makes collapse understandable. Drawing on cases from my research, I show how adaptive action can be both effective and fragile at the same time. And I argue that when teams reach the Brittle Threshold, they gain a different kind of insight. They learn what the system has been quietly depending on: extra effort, stretched roles, informal handoffs, relationship-based workarounds, and the assumptions that made it seem possible to keep going indefinitely.
For health professions education, Brittle Threshold is an analytic lens. It invites educators, researchers and leaders to treat adaptive success as evidence of hidden load, uneven risk absorption, and the boundaries beyond which adaptation becomes unsustainable. By learning to recognize Brittle Threshold, we can better prepare teams not only to cope in crisis, but to understand what their coping is costing and what must change so that care does not depend on endurance alone.
Biography: Dr. Sayra Cristancho is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Anatomy & Cell Biology, and a Scientist at the Centre for Education Research & Innovation (CERI) at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, Canada. She earned her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia.
Her research program investigates the nature of teamwork during crisis, with the aim of showing how best to support resilient teaming in healthcare. To this end, she has developed a distinctive research approach that cross-pollinates qualitative inquiry, sociobiology, and engineering principles with insights from diverse sectors including healthcare, business, music, tactical operations, and emergency response. Her work contributes both theoretically and practically to understanding how professionals and communities adapt under pressure.
Accessibility
CHES is committed to and strives to create a respectful and inclusive environment. The event venue is wheelchair accessible and accessible parking is available, please see here for more details. If you require dietary, physical, or other accessibility accommodations, please contact ches.admin@ubc.ca