Family Medicine Residency Site: Abbotsford-Mission

For many people, “Dry January” is a time to take a break or cut back on alcohol. But what are the health benefits of drinking less? What if you knew how many minutes of life you could potentially regain by skipping that last drink, or how your weekly alcohol intake measures up compared to smoking cigarettes?

That’s the aim of a new website, KnowAlcohol.ca, launched by researchers with the UBC Faculty of Medicine’s Island Medical Program and the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). The website features a tool and calculator designed to generate personalized estimates of the potential health risks related to an individual’s alcohol use—and the benefits of cutting back.

Using the science behind Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, the Know Alcohol calculator shares individualized risks of alcohol-related disease, including several types of cancers, measures like cigarette equivalency, and minutes of life lost per drink, as well as information about costs and calories related to alcohol—all tailored to individuals based on their age, sex and the amount they drink per week.

Learn more on New website helps you calculate the benefits of drinking less via UBC Faculty of Medicine.

Background: Cannabis use severely affects the outcome of people with psychotic disorders, yet there is a lack of treatments. To address this, in 2019 the National Health Service (NHS) Cannabis Clinic for Psychosis (CCP) was developed to support adults suffering from psychosis to reduce and/or stop their cannabis use.

Aims: Examine outcome data from the first 46 individuals to complete the CCP’s intervention.

Method: The sample (N = 46) consisted of adults (aged ≥ 18) with psychosis under the care of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, referred to the CCP between January 2020 and February 2023, who completed their intervention by September 2023. Clinical and functional measures were collected before (T0) and after (T1) the CCP intervention (one-to-one sessions and peer group attendance). Primary outcomes were changes in the Cannabis Use Disorders Identification Test-Revised (CUDIT-R) score and pattern of cannabis use. Secondary outcomes included T0–T1 changes in measures of delusions, paranoia, depression, anxiety and functioning.

Results: A reduction in the mean CUDIT-R score was observed between T0 (mean difference = 17.10, 95% CI = 15.54–18.67) and T1, with 73.91% of participants achieving abstinence and 26.09% reducing the frequency and potency of their use. Significant improvements in all clinical and functional outcomes were observed, with 90.70% being in work or education at T1 compared with 8.70% at T0. The variance in CUDIT-R scores explained between 34 and 64% of the variance in our secondary measures.

Conclusions: ‘Now, with the clinic I am looking at life in a whole different way, my brain is starting to work again, I am doing an apprenticeship. It has changed my life.’ – Intervention participant

The CCP intervention is a feasible strategy to support cannabis use cessation/reduction and improve clinical and functional outcomes of people with psychotic disorders. Our data evidence the reversibility of cannabis’s negative impact on psychosis prognosis if use changes. Moreover, our findings strongly suggest that young adults suffering from psychotic disorders who stop or significantly reduce their pattern of cannabis use are more likely to become socially active. Therefore, at a time when changes in the legal status of cannabis might increase accessibility to cannabis and its potent types, it is important to develop services like the CCP that provide young adults with psychosis with the knowledge and support needed to prevent and/or reverse the negative impact that cannabis use can have on their illness course and their family, as well as mental health services.

Read more on A proof-of-concept analysis of data from the first NHS clinic for young adults with comorbid cannabis use and psychotic disorders via Cambridge University Press.

We are thrilled to announce our upcoming Faculty Development Retreat in 2025, featuring two remarkable guest speakers: Dr. Shahana Alibhai and Dr. Nader Elmayergi. This retreat promises to inspire, inform, and invigorate our faculty as we explore themes of emotional literacy, mentorship, and the art of effective communication in medicine.

Dr. Shahana Alibhai: Emotional Literacy and the Power of Connection

“I know how much courage it takes for us to ask for help—but it is this courage that creates connection between a doctor and a patient, a teacher and their student, a parent and their child, that we as humans crave.” —Dr. Shahana Alibhai

Dr. Alibhai, a former Abbotsford-Mission family medicine resident and a practicing physician at Foundry Youth Health Centre, brings a wealth of experience and insight to this year’s retreat. She recently published her first book, Feeling Better: How Understanding Your Emotional Palette Can Keep You from Getting Swept Away, which delves into the critical role of emotional literacy in fostering mental health and meaningful relationships.

With over a decade of experience in mental health and a TEDx talk under her belt, Dr. Alibhai will guide participants through practical exercises and engaging discussions. Attendees will learn to:

• Understand the science behind emotional literacy.
• Apply emotional awareness to improve communication and decision-making.
• Cultivate stronger connections in both professional and personal relationships.

Dr. Alibhai’s session promises to leave participants equipped with new tools to enhance their interactions and foster resilience.

To learn more about her book and journey, visit drshahana.com. You can also hear her on the Chatter that Matters podcast here.

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Dr. Nader Elmayergi: Mentor Moments and Shaping the Future

Dr. Nader Elmayergi will also take the stage with his session, “Mentor Moments: Turning Rookies into Remarkable Physicians.”

Brief Biography

Dr. Elmayergi’s impressive medical journey began at Cairo University, where he graduated in 1998. He completed his Internal Medicine training at the University of Alberta and pursued a Cardiology Fellowship at the University of Manitoba, followed by a two-year Echocardiography Fellowship at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Currently, Dr. Elmayergi is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, and Medical Director of the Echocardiography Laboratory at Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre. In addition to his cardiology work, he is cross-appointed to the Department of Family Medicine, where he serves as the faculty lead for Subspecialty Rotations.

Dr. Elmayergi’s session will focus on the transformative power of mentorship in shaping the next generation of physicians. Drawing on his extensive experience, he will share strategies for:

• Building meaningful mentor-mentee relationships.
• Providing constructive feedback that fosters growth.
• Inspiring confidence and competence in new physicians.

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Join Us

This year’s Faculty Development Retreat will be a unique opportunity to reflect, connect, and grow as educators and healthcare providers. By combining the insights of Dr. Alibhai and Dr. Elmayergi, we aim to explore the powerful intersection of emotional literacy and mentorship in shaping remarkable physicians. We look forward to seeing you there!

Objective: To systematically assess literature examining the impact of being a gamer or participating in video-game-based training on surgical skills acquisition amongst medical students.

Background: Video games and surgical procedures share similar skills such as visuospatial abilities and hand-eye coordination; therefore, video games can be a valuable tool for surgical training amongst medical students. However, comprehensive, up-to-date systematic reviews are necessary to confirm.

Methods: A systematic literature search of PubMed, MEDLINE, and EMBASE was performed in April 2020 with no limits set on the date of publication. Observational and randomized controlled studies were included. Quality and bias were assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for nonrandomized studies and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation system for randomized studies.

Results: A total of 575 participants from 16 studies were included. The most common surgical skills tested were laparoscopy (n = 283, from 8 studies) and robotic surgery (n = 199, from 5 studies). A history of gaming and video-game-based training were associated with improved metrics in robotic surgery and laparoscopy, respectively. Neither was beneficial in arthroscopy or bronchoscopy. Studies using the Wii U and Underground reported significant improvement in overall laparoscopic performance.

Conclusion: Video games demonstrate potential as adjunctive training in surgical skill education, with a history of gaming and video-game-based training being beneficial in robotic surgery and laparoscopy, respectively. Methodological heterogeneity amongst included studies limit the ability to make conclusive decisions; thus, future studies with long-term follow-up, larger sample sizes, outcomes stratified by video-game characteristics, and up-to-date technology are necessary.

Read more on Can video games enhance surgical skills acquisition for medical students? A systematic review via Surgery.

“British Columbia’s decision last year to make contraception free led to a spike in the number of women choosing long-acting options, such as intrauterine devices, that are better than the pill at preventing unwanted pregnancies, new data show.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have been tracking how the policy, which kicked in April 1, 2023, is influencing the number and type of birth-control products dispensed across the province.

They noted a significant shift to IUDs, implants and other types of long-acting birth control as soon as those products, which can cost as much as $400 upfront, became 100 per cent publicly funded.

“It’s a really substantial change, more than we really thought we might find and more than we generally see for cost-sharing policy changes in other kinds of clinical areas,” said Laura Schummers, a reproductive epidemiologist and assistant professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC.”

Read more on UBC research shows increase in birth-control use after province made contraception free via North Shore News.

Calling all health professional education faculty on the Educational Leadership track! Are you uncertain about promotion requirements? Frustrated by the lack of community with people who share your experiences? Longing to find others on the same track with whom to share insights and experiences? Have we got a webinar for you! Dr. Marion Pearson, Professor of Teaching, Associate Dean of Students (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences), CHES Scholar, and past-Chair of the UBC Senate Appointments Committee will be leading a discussion about what is expected of faculty on the Educational Leadership track and how to frame your work when putting together promotion materials. This will be a great opportunity to connect with others in similar situations and possibly plant the seeds for future connections. Following Dr. Pearson’s presentation, Dr. Laura Yvonne Bulk, Assistant Professor of Teaching (Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy) will lead a conversation among attendees about how we can build a community of educational leaders to support one another as we navigate this career journey. This will be a great opportunity to connect with others in similar situations and possibly plant the seeds for future connections. Mark your calendars and please. REGISTER HERE if you are planning to attend. Date: Monday, January 27, 2025 Time: 11:30am – 1:00pm (PST) Zoom ID: 629 6489 5358 / Passcode: 371990 Click here to add the seminar to your calendar.We look forward to joining you for this conversation!If you have any questions about this seminar, please reach out to CHES at ches.communications@ubc.ca.

“Previous research in a laboratory setting has shown that people’s cognitive performance improves in the hours after exercise, but how long this benefit lasts is unknown.

The new study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, found that, on average, people aged 50 to 83 who did more moderate to vigorous physical activity than usual on a given day did better in memory tests the day after.

Less time spent sitting and six hours or more of sleep were also linked to better scores in memory tests the next day.

More deep (slow-wave*) sleep also contributed to memory function, and the research team found this accounted for a small portion of the link between exercise and better next-day memory.”

Read more on Short-term cognitive boost from exercise may last for 24 hours via Science Daily. Image by OpenAI.

“Introduction: Since its release, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its utilization in various fields of life. This review’s main goal CHATGPT is a CHATGPT developed by Open AI. This robot is trained with the help of artificial intelligence on a large amount of data to learn language patterns. In the medical application of CHATGPT, the main topic is the conversation between doctors and patients. Method: In this study we searched in Scopus, Google scholar, PubMed databases and by searching with keywords such as “Nursing Services”, “Importance of CHATGPT” and “Medical Education” during 2018-2024 to obtain articles related to the selected keywords. This innovation has the potential to automate daily tasks such as generating patient records or writing reports. By studying more than 45 articles about CHATGPT and the role of artificial intelligence in medicine, the results of this study showed that CHATGPT, with its very high potential, can play an important role in the field of interactions between humans and artificial intelligence and intelligent systems in the future.

Results: The move towards the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, which is informed by patient information, can provide more personalized and clinically accurate answers to patients. Also, according to the findings of this research, it can be said: Automating administrative functions, scheduling visits, simplifying notes, checking insurance approvals for drugs, and other repetitive daily tasks can reduce the focus on administrative tasks and more time for providing medical care in to authorize the personnel. Conclusion: In this research, the researchers noticed the mistakes of CHATGPT chat bot in creating cancer treatment programs. According to these researchers, this chat bot had provided one-third of its answers in the field of designing treatment programs with incorrect information.”

Read more on CHAT-GPT and artificial intelligence in Medical Endocrine System and interventions via Eurasian Journal of Chemical, Medicinal, & Petroleum Research.

“Generative artificial intelligence (AI) models are increasingly utilized for medical applications. We tested whether such models are prone to human-like cognitive biases when offering medical recommendations. We explored the performance of OpenAI generative pretrained transformer (GPT)-4 and Google Gemini-1.0-Pro with clinical cases that involved 10 cognitive biases and system prompts that created synthetic clinician respondents.

Medical recommendations from generative AI were compared with strict axioms of rationality and prior results from clinicians. We found that significant discrepancies were apparent for most biases. For example, surgery was recommended more frequently for lung cancer when framed in survival rather than mortality statistics (framing effect: 75% vs. 12%; P<0.001). Similarly, pulmonary embolism was more likely to be listed in the differential diagnoses if the opening sentence mentioned hemoptysis rather than chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (primacy effect: 100% vs. 26%; P<0.001). In addition, the same emergency department treatment was more likely to be rated as inappropriate if the patient subsequently died rather than recovered (hindsight bias: 85% vs. 0%; P<0.001). One exception was base-rate neglect that showed no bias when interpreting a positive viral screening test (correction for false positives: 94% vs. 93%; P=0.431).

The extent of these biases varied minimally with the characteristics of synthetic respondents, was generally larger than observed in prior research with practicing clinicians, and differed between generative AI models. We suggest that generative AI models display human-like cognitive biases and that the magnitude of bias can be larger than observed in practicing clinicians.”

More on Cognitive Biases & Artificial Intelligence via NEJM AI.

“The state of childhood in Canada has reached a breaking point. The seventh annual Raising Canada report, released today, finds that the top 10 threats to childhood are escalating, with children’s quality of life in Canada demonstrably worsening. The report includes an urgent call for policymakers to address and overcome these pressing issues. It also calls on community leaders to recognize the value of youth engagement as a critical element of creating and implementing solutions to complex social issues.

The annual Raising Canada report is published by Children First Canada, based on research conducted by the University of Calgary and McGill University. Researchers compiled existing data and conducted interviews with youth, parents and other subject matter experts. It comes as Canada ranks 66th out of 194 countries on the global Kids Rights Index.

Among the startling findings:

• 28.4% of children under 18 live in food-insecure households, an increase from 24.3% the previous year.
• One in five kids (20%) in Canada have diagnosed mental health challenges.
• Two-thirds (60%) of Canadians reported experiencing maltreatment (including physical and/or emotional abuse) before the age of 15.
• Police reports of online sexual exploitation of children have nearly tripled since 2014; Sextortion reports have increased by 150% since June 2022 and online sexual luring reports have surged 815% over the last five years.
• Hospital stays for children under four have increased by 32% due to respiratory illnesses.
• Child homicide and filicide are significant threats to children’s survival, with 40 child homicides reported in 2022.

This year’s report also highlights several cross-cutting themes, including the influence of technology on children and adolescents. Researchers note that digital platforms have made it easier to create and share messages of hate, discrimination, and cyberbullying, which adversely impact mental health, physical activity, and the risk of violence and abuse. Evidence also concludes that the negative effects of technology on mental health have intensified since the onset of the pandemic, with the RCMP warning that victims face extreme outcomes of sextortion, including self-harm or suicide.

“Children today are facing unprecedented threats—from rising poverty and mental health crises to violence in their homes and online. Parents are struggling to offer their children a better way of life than they had,” says Sara Austin, Founder and CEO of Children First Canada. “Canada’s kids deserve better—a better childhood and a brighter future, and their survival and ability to thrive depend on the choices we make today. We must act with urgency and conviction to turn this around.”

Read more on New Report Reveals Record Increases in Violence, Poverty, Mental Health Issues and Sexploitation Among Canada’s Kids (2024) via Children First Canada.