Family Medicine Residency Site: Abbotsford-Mission

On Tuesday, December 7, 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (ET), the Section of Teachers (SOT) invites you to a free-flowing Q & A–style webinar on incorporating planetary health education in family medicine training. Given the realities of climate change affecting different parts of Canada, there are startling revelations on the importance of planetary health as a key area of focus for family physicians and for family medicine education. In this interactive webinar, hear from family physicians and learners who have been advocating for planetary health education and share practical examples on our collective opportunities to increase awareness and foster learning innovations. Planetary health comes at a time when we are all called to reflect on our ways of knowing and doing, challenging us to do better. Linked to curriculum enhancements needed in Indigenous health, anti-racism, and anti-oppression education in medical education, reform is possible.

Date & time: December 7, 12pm-1pm ET
Event Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kh8-JdlWbA

Learning objectives. Participants will:

1. Become aware of the Guide to Integrating Planetary Health in Family Medicine Training.  
2. Explore practical experiential learning opportunities for awakening educator interest in planetary health. 
3. Share who across the country is advocating and advancing planetary health education in medicine. 
4. Catalyze a community of interest among teachers/learners to advance planetary health education in family medicine.  
5. Recognize the opportunities of advancing planetary health education stimulating curriculum change while supporting a medical education culture that values Indigenous health, anti-racism, and anti-oppression in service of fostering a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  

Panelists: Dr. Warren Bell, Dr. Aimée Bouka, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, Dr. Celia Walker, Dr. Edward Xie, and Dr. Jean Zigby.

“UBC Southern Medical Program student Brayden Fishbook was en route to Chilliwack for a family practice elective when he found himself stranded due to the province’s catastrophic atmospheric river event.

When he arrived in Hope four hours later, traffic crawled through town as torrential rain poured down.

‘I came across a hotel that was completely dark and quickly realized the entire town was without power,’ says Fishbook. ‘Cars were parked at gas stations waiting for power to return and traffic was being diverted across the Fraser River as Highway 1 was now closed.’

Fishbook followed rerouted traffic towards Highway 7 and eventually came to a standstill due to another landslide. With Highway 3 also blocked, all routes in and out of the small rural community were closed indefinitely.

Exhausted and resigned to his situation, Fishbook pulled over to the side of the road and spent the night in his car. ‘Fortunately, I had my sleeping bag, a pillow and some food I had packed for my stay in Chilliwack,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t too cold overnight and I actually managed to get some sleep.'”

Read more about Brayden’s experience via UBC Faculty of Medicine.

Interested in hosting your own medical education event but limited in resources? A Twitter Conference may be an alternative to the traditional gathering.

“The Education Innovation Institute (EII) of Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University, hosted a conference on Twitter about Professional Identity Formation (PIF), #MCGConf2021PIF, on February 25, 2021. The conference featured five presentations by 15 authors from Canada and the U.S.A Twitter conference is a versatile, affordable, and accessible digital option for medical education groups interested in diversifying conference offerings and reaching a broader audience. It was low-cost, organized in six months, and garnered over 9,000 Twitter impressions. Small networks and interest groups can organize Twitter conferences for their constituencies and larger conference organizations can host online mini-conferences to supplement in-person events.”

More on Engaging medical education scholars with a Twitter conference on professionalism and professional identity formation via CMEJ.

“Learners have been so resilient at every stage of the game. They’ve continued to march through the sort of lifecycle of medical education and in greater numbers than ever before.”
~ Dr. David Skorton, President AAMC.

This is What We Do: Academic Medicine Rising to the Challenge of COVID-19 from AAMC on Vimeo.

You are invited to the UBC’s Department of Family Practice December Research Rounds!

Presentation Title: Is Sleep the Keystone of Healthy Aging?
Presenter: Dr Adam Spira, Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
When: December 1, 2021 at 12:00pm – 1:00pm Pacific (Vancouver) Time
Where: Zoom: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/64039045523?pwd=bXJuWUhyZ05xS0tMSXpKdWNsRmtKQT09

Talk Abstract: In this presentation, Dr. Adam Spira will highlight research tying disturbed sleep to cognitive and functional decline and Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in later life, and discuss implications of sleep health for older adults’ overall health and well-being. 

Speaker Biography: Dr Adam Spira is Professor and Vice Chair for Research and Faculty in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He studies links of sleep with health outcomes in later life, including cognitive and functional decline, and Alzheimer’s disease pathology. 

“While politicians negotiated climate pledges at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, UK, scientists of all stripes provided advice and presented the latest climate data. Nature spoke to a range of them about their research, their participation in the meeting, and what solutions they think the world needs.”

Learn more about COP26 and the scientists behind the crucial climate summit via Nature.

“Emergency department (ED) visits for pediatric mental health conditions increased by 60% from 2007 to 2016.¹ A shortage of psychiatric beds for youths requiring hospitalization may result in boarding, defined by the Joint Commission as “the practice of holding patients in the ED or another temporary location after the decision to admit or transfer has been made.”² The Joint Commission has recommended a boarding duration of less than 4 hours to support patient safety and health care quality.² However, no national studies have quantified the extent of pediatric mental health boarding.³ This study estimates the frequency and duration of boarding for pediatric mental health conditions at US acute care hospitals and describes hospital resources available to support youths during the boarding period.”

Read more about their findings on Frequency and Duration of Boarding for Pediatric Mental Health Conditions at Acute Care Hospitals in the US via JAMA.

For more information and registration, click here.

“What is…”

Cue the Jeopardy theme song! Brought to you by Neffy as the winner of the NPR 2021 Tiny Desk Contest.

Click here to answer.

#TheLancet #PictureQuiz 

“Our review showed a significant benefit of physical activity interventions of various types on certain outcomes including mobility, ADLs, cognitive function, quality of life and frailty when compared to control groups in frail adults aged 65 years or more. The effect sizes ranged from small to large, with low to moderate certainty of evidence. When we looked at all physical activity interventions together, there was a large effect on frailty, a medium effect on quality of life, ADLs and mobility, and a small effect on cognitive function.

Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been conducted to evaluate various physical activity interventions and their outcomes related to frailty prevention, progression and reversal, but few have used such an explicit inclusion criterion for prefrailty or frailty, or combined individual measurements of outcomes (such as muscle strength and gait speed) into overall effect estimates (such as physical performance) to allow for a more robust presentation of the results. However, frailty itself was measured infrequently, both at baseline and after the intervention. The authors of only 4 of the 23 studies that we meta-analyzed reported frailty outcomes after the intervention, 3 of which were mixed physical activity interventions. When compared to control, these interventions showed a large effect size, with moderate certainty of evidence, similar to other reviews; however, the GRADE approach was not used in any of those reviews, and only 2 included a meta-analysis of outcomes.”

More on the Effectiveness of physical activity interventions in older adults with frailty or prefrailty: a systematic review and meta-analysis via CMAJ.