Rate My Professor Damian Castanelli

Damian Castanelli is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash Health, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University. He practices as a paediatric anaesthetist at Monash Children’s Hospital while pursuing research in medical education. His academic background includes an MBBS from the University of Melbourne (1991), a Master of Clinical Education from the University of New South Wales (2009), a Graduate Certificate in Educational Research Methodology from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2014), and a PhD from Deakin University (2022) titled “How can ‘assessment for learning’ meaningfully contribute to ‘programmatic assessment’?”.

Castanelli specializes in clinical education, workplace learning, and assessment in health professional education, with a focus on anaesthesia training. He contributed to the design of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) 2013 Curriculum and the development of workplace-based assessment tools, and currently chairs the ANZCA Education, Training, and Assessment Development Committee, overseeing program evaluation and improvement across Australia and New Zealand. His awards include the Southern Health Senior Medical Staff Research Award (2009) for multi-source feedback research in anaesthesia, Excellence in Medical Education Research Award (2018), Steuart Henderson Award (2020), and AMEE Doctoral Award (2023). Key publications are “The rise of simulation in technical skills teaching and the implications for training novices in anaesthesia” (2009, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care), “Making robust assessments of specialist trainees’ workplace performance” (2017, British Journal of Anaesthesia), “Trust, power and learning in workplace-based assessment: The trainee perspective” (2022, Medical Education), “The stigma of underperformance in assessment and remediation” (2025, Advances in Health Sciences Education), and “The who and the what of health professional education PhDs: A document analysis” (2025, Focus on Health Professional Education). With an h-index of 17, his scholarship has impacted competency-based medical education and procedural skills training.