Rate My Professor Martina Kelly

Dr. Martina Kelly is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, serving as Program Director and Undergraduate Education Director for Family Medicine. She is a practicing family physician at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre. Her academic background includes an MB BCh BAO from University College Dublin in 1994, an MA in Higher Education from University College Cork in 2007, a PhD, and certifications as FRCGP, CCFP, and MICGP. Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2012, she was a Lecturer in the School of Medicine at University College Cork from 1999 to 2012. Originally from Ireland, she has contributed to medical education and clinical practice in both countries.

Dr. Kelly's research specializations focus on medical education, family medicine, qualitative research employing hermeneutic phenomenology, physician-patient interactions, embodied and nonverbal communication including touch and silence, acoustics and sounds in clinical care, multimorbidity management, and generalism in undergraduate medical education. Her scholarly output includes over 150 publications, with a Google Scholar h-index of 26 and more than 2,200 citations. Key works are "Physicians’ Experiences of Touch, a Hermeneutic Reflection" (Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 2023), "Aesthetic Experience in Poetry and Medical Practice" (Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 2024), "Bespoke to the patient: a qualitative study on learning to manage multimorbidity in family medicine" (Canadian Medical Education Journal, 2025), "Generalism in undergraduate medical education, a Canadian perspective" (Medical Teacher, 2024), and "The Soundtrack of a Clinic Day" (Annals of Family Medicine, 2025). She has received the 2022 Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) Gold Humanism Award, CAME Certificate of Merit Award, and other recognitions in 2016, 2015, and 2014. Dr. Kelly serves on the Health Humanities Committee, has secured OHMES funding, and influences health professions education through editorial contributions and public scholarship on clinical encounters.