Awards & Grants Medical Student

The 2024 competition is closed. The deadline to submit an essay to your local university coordinator was February 9, 2024. Please check back in the fall for details on the 2025 competition.

The CAS is pleased to support the Medical Student Prize. This essay competition seeks to increase awareness among undergraduate medical students of the specialty of anesthesia and the role of anesthesiologists in modern healthcare. A first, second, and third prize will be awarded.

Eligibility

  • The applicant must be a full-time medical student in any Canadian medical school

Format

  • Anesthesia undergraduate education directors at each university oversee the essay submission process
  • Papers can be written in French or in English
  • Electronic submissions of 1,000 to 1,500 words will be accepted in Microsoft Word format only (not PDF) and must focus on one of the topics below
  • Submit in electronic format to your local Canadian University Anesthesiology Coordinator, via email, and include your name, university and email address
  • The purpose of this essay writing contest is for Canadian medical students to research, analyze, and reflect on a topic in anesthesiology. Writers are expected to submit only their own work and to provide full references. In the era of Chat GPT, entries will be allowed where the writer has attested to the use of an AI generator. The AI prompt(s) must be included with the submission but do not contribute to the word count. Anti plagiarism and AI detection software will be used on essays if deemed necessary by the judges and/or organizer. Those essays that are scored to have a high likelihood of being written by AI will be returned to the submitting school and be disqualified from the competition. The determination in this matter is final

Topics

  1. The Anesthesiologists’ role in the modern medical school curriculum
  2. Anesthesiologists as leaders in patient safety
  3. Anesthesia and humanistic medicine
  4. The contribution of Anesthesiology to research in medicine
  5. The use of the anesthesia simulator for Anesthesiology teaching: Future uses
  6. The Anesthesiologist as the perioperative physician.
  7. A topic related to the history of Canadian Anesthesiology
  8. Professionalism in medicine
  9. Anesthesiology’s contribution to Pain Management
  10. Other topics that are suitable, to be cleared by your local Undergraduate Education Supervisor

Selection Process

  • After an initial review process at each university, a maximum of two essays may be forwarded to a national review committee.
  • The national review committee will judge the submissions. 

Prizes

  • 1st Prize: $1,000, complimentary registration for the next CAS Annual Meeting, and essay to be published in ANESTHESIA NEWS, the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society newsletter
  • 2nd Prize: $500
  • 3rd Prize: $250 
​All Three Prize Winners will receive complimentary CAS Membership and will be acknowledged via CAS marketing channels

For further information

Please contact the anesthesia department in your university for local submission information.