Family Medicine Residency Site: Abbotsford-Mission

Headed to Bozeman, Montana for the Wilderness Medicine Conference in February! Conferences are a great opportunity to network with others, showcase your research, gather new paradigms, share ideas, learn about the latest technology, and tinker with state-of-the-art tools. It’s always a bonus if you have a few extra days to connect with the host city and immerse yourself in a new culture. Events that may pique your interest this year:

Alberta College of Family Physicians: ACFP2019
American Academy for Family Physicians: AAFP2019
Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference: APMEC2019
BC College of Family Physicians: BCCFP2019
BC Rural Health Conference: RHC2019
Canadian Conference on Medical Education: CCME2019
Family Medicine Forum: FMF2019
Health Care Education Association: HCEA2019
Innovations in Medical Education Conference: IME2019
International Association for Medical Education: AMEE 2019
Manitoba College of Family Physicians: MCFP2019
Office Practice of Primary Care Medicine: HMS2019
Ottawa Conference: Ottawa2020
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners: GP19
Society for Public Health Education: SOPHE2019
Stanford Medicine X: CHANGE2019
TED Vancouver: TED2019
The International Conference on Residency Education: ICRE 2019

To learn more about what’s happening closer to home, check out UBC’s Faculty of Medicine Calendar of Events or UBC’s CPD Conferences.

Warm regards,

Jacqueline

Join President Santa J. Ono for UBC Connects, a new public lecture series featuring the world’s most esteemed thought leaders. UBC connects the dots — and people — to shed light on the world’s most pressing issues. February’s featured speaker is Michael Pollan on “Food, plants and psychedelics: Revolutionary approaches to human health and well-being”. Learn more here!

Big news on the UBC front! CHIME telescope detects second-ever repeating fast radio burst! I think it’s Dave. He seems to pop up every 9 years right? 2001…2010…2019!

Here’s what else caught my eye this week:

Interpersonal medicine already exists. It’s called family medicine.

“There is a danger that our growing exposure to beautifully presented images of food having detrimental consequences.” Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation.

Physical activity and sedentary behaviour in kids.

Amphetamine- and Opioid-Affected Births: Incidence, Outcomes, and Costs, United States, 2004–2015.

Why a medieval woman had lapis lazuli hidden in her teeth.

Doctors as patients.

UBC CHES Event! Lies, Damned Lies, and Surveys (Jan 16).

What do surgery and airline travel have in common?

Best medical apps (so far)

The International Performing Arts Vancouver PuSh Festival is back! (various venues, Jan 17–Feb 3).

Need to improve your leadership style? Two things you can do right now.

Have a great weekend and enjoy some time outdoors!

Jacqueline

“Perhaps the greatest long-term potential of AI in health systems is the development of a massive data infrastructure to support nearest-neighbor analysis, another application of AI used to identify ‘digital twins.’ If each person’s comprehensive biologic, anatomic, physiologic, environmental, socioeconomic, and behavioral data, including treatment and outcomes, were entered, an extraordinary learning system would be created.”

Eric J. Topol on High-Performance Medicine: The Convergence of Human and Artificial Intelligence. A 2019 must-read!

“Building learning organizations requires basic changes in thinking and behaviour that overturn conventional and reactionary beliefs. Shifting from a fragmented, competitive and reactive organization to one that is systemic, cooperative and creative also requires a ‘Galilean shift’ toward building ‘communities of commitment.’ In this regard, commitment goes beyond personal loyalty to include a commitment to societal changes through one’s organization.”

Fred Kofman & Peter Senge on Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations.

Pearls for Immunization Practice is now CME accredited through UBC and Residents can accrue Mainpro-1 CME credits towards their first five years of practice.

Pearls for Immunization Practice is an online self-learning course for all interested immunization providers and takes approximately 90 minutes to complete. It is especially useful for those physicians new to immunization practice in BC.  This course is also suitable as a refresher course for physicians who already have a theoretical and clinical understanding of immunization practice and would like to update their knowledge.

Learn more and register for the free course here.

Journalist Celeste Headlee’s TEDx talk on 10 ways to have a better conversation made me think about how we teach and demonstrate the art of a good conversation as well as how we allocate time and space for learners to develop their “softer” skills such as listening, problem solving, time management, and the ability to receive and learn from constructive feedback. Although the presentation’s title says 10 ways, there are actually 11 (and I think it’s the best one).

Warm regards,

Jacqueline

“Over the last half century, Systems Theory has spread across disciplines, from psychology to engineering. By the 1980s and ’90s management science began to apply Systems Theory broadly. Application of this theory rests on the assumption that most individuals strive to do good work, but that they are acted upon by diverse influences, and that functional and efficient systems not only account for, but also embrace, these influences. Causal Analysis based on Systems Theory asserts that when errors occur, one ought not focus solely on individual failings, but on the surroundings that allowed such events to transpire. It further asserts that outcomes can be influenced by smart interventions, developed after studying common patterns and behaviors across time.”

Dr. Brett Anderson on Improving Healthcare by Embracing Systems Theory.

Anderson, B. (2016). Improving healthcare by embracing systems theory. The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, 152(2). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947551/

The HoloBrain is an interactive, augmented reality app that helps students understand the architecture of the brain. Since this video was released, Dr. Krebs has tested the app on students to determine its impact on learning. Here are the results! Also, they’ve taken this platform to launch Holobrain in Webvr that “aims at delivering a similar experience to a wider audience. Using a web app we are able to network more HoloBrains to each other, in the hopes of eventually making this a tool used to teach large classes. The tools used in this project are AFrame for building a VR experience using just Javascript and HTML, and Blender and Amira for segmentation of MRI scans and production of the 3D models.”

It’s interesting because over the course of the past few months that I’ve been researching the medical/clinical learning setting, it’s virtual, augmented, and mixed reality learning environments that elicit student responses such as “This is fun! This is cool!” (see The APPLE Project, p. 606, of Creating Innovative Models of Clinical Nursing Education). Also, I’ve noted that “the fun” translates to greater engagement, collaboration, and integration of information. It’s fantastic that there are medical/clinical educators and administrators willing to challenge the antiquated content delivery process that academia has used for decades.

It’s also about time we change it up and recognize that fun and play are essential to learning…even in college! Play encourages risk and failure and that safe space allows learners to challenge themselves. Many of these platforms also provide instantaneous, constructive, and specific feedback on performance as opposed to “Read more around…”

We grow from being attended to and nurtured. If alternative methods to learning support this then we should consider how to best incorporate these technologies to supplement our medical and clinical education models.

For more on the Holobrain and Dr. Claudia Krebs work, click here.

Warm regards,

Jacqueline

Congratulations to all those that received the Certificate of Merit Award by the Canadian Association for Medical Education (CAME)! The award recognizes and rewards faculty members who are committed to medical education in 17 medical schools across Canada. A special congratulations to our UBC Department of Family Practice physicians Drs. Maria Hubinette and Beth Watt for your leadership and dedication to excellence! More here!