The British Columbia Medical Journal is pleased to announce that Mr Andrew Provan has won the J.H. MacDermot Prize for 2011. The BCMJ welcomes article submissions from student authors, and each year awards a prize of $1000 for the best article written by a medical student in the pro­vince of British Columbia. The BCMD2B article category encompasses a wide range of submissions, from scientific articles to essays about the medical school experience.

Mr Provan wrote a well-argued premise piece titled “A critique of problem-based learning at the Uni­versity of British Columbia” [BCMJ 2011;53:132-133 [8]]. The article spark­ed a lively debate on the merits of PBL, both in online comments and in the Personal View section in subsequent issues of the Journal.

Mr Provan also won the BCMJ med student blog contest last year, for his blog titled “Teaching and technology in medicine: Too much information [9]?” published in October 2011. 

The BCMJ thanks Andrew for his informative and well-written submissions, and we hope to see more of his work—and the work of other BC medical students—in the future.