Featured site Iqaluit, Nunavut

Starting in 2011, incredible and challenging rural and remote health care experiences were implemented for family medicine residents in the Territory of Nunavut. Residents are based in Iqaluit, at the Qikiqtani General Hospital, and have opportunities to work in some of the smaller communities throughout Nunavut.

winter 2014 • Volume 1, number 1

family medicine matters 1

inside Message from the Chair 3

Stories and Suggestions: We welcome your comments and

Undergraduate Program Update 4

suggestions. If you have stories you would like to share or think are

Postgraduate Residency Program Update

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of importance to family medicine, please feel free to contact Patti

Faculty Development 6

McCarthy at [email protected] or 709 777 2494.

Research Update 7 New and Noteworthy

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Comings and Going s

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Family medicine MATTERS is published by the Discipline of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland. Co-ordinator: Patti McCarthy [email protected] 709 777 2494

Rural Medical Education Network Update

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Teaching and Learning

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Teaching Tip

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Editor: Sharon Gray [email protected] 709 777 8397

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Graphics and layout: Jennifer Armstrong, HSIMS

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Photography: John Crowell, Terry Upshall, HSIMS

An Interprofessional Perspective Keeping Track

Thank-you to Luanne Agriesti-Cleary, Trish Penton and Susan Carter for their help in collecting information for this newsletter and to those who authored particular stories in this issue. Printed by: MUN Printing Service Med-072-12-2013-100-JA

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message from the chair By Dr. Cathy MacLean

WELCOME to the first edition of our newsletter!

This newsletter will be a wonderful vehicle for sharing stories, expertise and news.

Many thanks to Patti McCarthy for making this happen. Newsletters can serve many purposes. They are certainly used as a communication tool but they can also act as a means of recording our living history, celebrating our successes and bringing us together towards a common vision. There is a lot happening in the Discipline of Family Medicine. We have 300 community faculty in our discipline in more than 40 communities teaching undergraduate and postgraduate learners. We are doing research and publishing. We are advocating for better health care and systems to support primary care in Newfoundland and Labrador. Communication is critical so that we are well coordinated – juggling effectively and sharing our experience to give our learners the best possible education in family medicine and our patients the best possible care. This newsletter will be a wonderful vehicle for sharing stories, expertise and news. CaRMS is around the corner. MUN has traditionally had strong matches to family medicine. Nationally, matches to family medicine reached 36 per cent last year and has been steadily increasing for several years now. At MUN, 32 per cent of the graduating class had family medicine as their first choice in the 2012 CaRMS match. We want to re-establish a strong interest in family medicine by marketing our program more locally and across Canada, rediscovering ways to distinguish rural training here and celebrating our many successes more visibly. Communication will be a very important tool in this strategy. Our success will also depend on partnering better with our rural sites and removing some of the uncertainties of our residency program for our students. While we transition to streams and a more distributed program, we are also transitioning to delivering more of a Triple C competency-based curriculum and trying to better meet the needs of local rural communities. These challenges will require improved communication across the postgraduate program with faculty, community preceptors and residents. By using a variety of communication tools, we hope to keep everyone in the loop and engaged. In addition to these initiatives, we have other projects on the go including much needed space repairs and upgrading of the Family Practice Unit clinic in the Health Sciences Centre, development of new enhanced skills programs including care of the elderly, and preparation for an internal accreditation review next year, to name a few. We are looking for efficiencies in how we do things adopting more of a quality improvement approach and are finding ways to enhance communication and collaboration with the Rural Medical Education Network, Undergraduate Medical Education, Postgraduate Medical Education, the regions and other key partners. When there is a lot going on, the need for communication is even more than usual. So the timing of this newsletter couldn’t be better. I hope you enjoy reading this and are as impressed as I have been, learning about all things that are going on in family medicine. We have a lot to do, to celebrate, to share and talk about. Thanks for all you’ve been doing and let us know what you would like shared in future editions!

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undergraduate program update By Dr. Scott Moffatt

You Would Have to be Hiding Under a Rock… You would have to be hiding under a rock if you didn’t realize that 2013 represented a year of big changes within the Faculty of Medicine here at Memorial University. Contractors are close to completing a new, state-of-the-art building to expand the medical school, 80 students make up the Class of 2017 (increased from the historic baseline of 60 students) and a new spiral curriculum was introduced in September to the first-year class.

As the assistant dean of student affairs I have witnessed tremendous excitement as our new students embrace the new curriculum.

Change brings with it both excitement and at times a healthy bit of a trepidation, which keeps us pushing the envelope in order that our medical program is world-class and our facilities allow our students to be the best they can be in their chosen career. As the assistant dean of student affairs I have witnessed tremendous excitement as our new students embrace the new curriculum. An individual and collective resilience is palpable as they negotiate the occasional speed bumps they have encountered along the way as the first class working through the new curriculum. The Phase 1 leadership of Dr. Victor Maddalena, the commitment of our faculty both administratively and as teachers, as well as our first-year students’ commitment to whole-hearted engagement, has allowed the new curriculum to be rolled out effectively with active involvement of the students in the process. These 80 resilient medical students will be the inaugural class to christen each of the three two-week community-based experiences which are scheduled during pre-clerkship. Having met the virtual Spurrell and Wareham families from St. James, NL in the new curriculum, our students will connect with a community – live and breathe the air – in order to understand both the determinants of health within a particular community, and to experience life as a family physician within the community. Community Engagement I occurs in Phase 1 (and will look similar to the previous First Year Rural Visit); Community Engagement II will occur in Phase 2 (a new community-based experience) and Community Engagement III will occur in Phase 3 (and will look similar to the previous Black Bag). It is expected that some students will connect with a community during their Community Engagement I Experience and return to that community for the following two community-based experiences. This will offer these students a place which they can get to know as a person, and a place where they can mature as a medical learner. Other students will choose to do their community-based experiences in different communities, which will offer them diversity both personally and as a learner. Challenges exist in the implementation of our new community-based experiences. Capacity within Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon to accommodate our students is essential. The Family Medicine Undergraduate Office will be forwarding a survey to ensure the commitment of our current medical teachers and also to shake the bushes to ensure that family physicians interested in teaching are on our radar, so that our distributed experiences continue to be rich classrooms for our medical students.

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Postgraduate Medical Education Update By Drs. Danielle O’Keefe and Ean Parsons 2014 CaRMS Match • • • • •

We have a total of 33 seats in the first round of the match. 31 seats are allocated for Canadian medical graduates. Two seats are allocated for international medical graduates. Interview dates: January 27-29, 2014. Match day: March 5, 2014.

Triple C Curriculum and Competency Based Education • Triple C is a competency-based curriculum that is comprehensive, centred in family medicine and focused on continuity. • This curriculum is being delivered in a variety of ways across many of our training sites (e.g. integrated longitudinal experiences in Burin and Grand Falls-Windsor for one year, six months in Gander, eight months in Goose Bay, up to ten months in Twillingate, Botwood, Springdale and Port aux Basques). • Field Notes are one of the means by which competency is being documented. We appreciate your commitment to filling out these forms and giving ongoing feedback to our residents. The electronic format of the field note can be found on our website: www.med.mun.ca/familymed/ postgrad/Field-Notes.aspx. Place a link on your computer desktop to have easier access! We also have paper copies of the Field Notes. Please let us know if you’d like more copies. • How does everything fit together for the resident in this new curriculum? Take a look at the latest video from the CFPC: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=noNkqFhn2XY. Family Medicine Program Streams • Evolution of the program towards core academic training streams in various areas across the province, New Brunswick and Nunavut. • In preparation for separate CaRMS matches to our streams in years to come (not this coming year!), we will be looking for your interest and support to help develop the academic training program in your area. Stay tuned! • Incoming residents in 2014 will match to a two-year template that will allow the resident to be primarily based in one stream for the duration of their training. This will allow us to determine our resources, site capacities, etc. Can’t remember who to contact for your postgraduate family medicine needs? Please use the generic office email address: [email protected].

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faculty development By Dr. Cheri Bethune

So what is happening in faculty development that is going to help you (and your organization) foster lifelong learning? Medical Education Forum Humber Valley Oct 2013

“The goal of faculty development is to

This fabulous meeting keeps getting better. This year in Humber Valley we enjoyed workshops facilitated by many preceptors and full-time faculty working in teams – Teaching on the Fly, Evaluating Learners, Teaching and Assessing Clinical Reasoning, Portfolios and Competency Based Learning, Teaching across the Continuum, Teaching with New Technology, The Learner in Difficulty and Technology and Application in Medical Education.

empower faculty

Thanks once again to all who developed and facilitated these sessions and the participants who made them so dynamic.

members to excel

The Six for Six Program

in their role as educators and in so doing to create organizations that encourage and reward continual learning.“ David Irby Professor of medicine University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine

Six for Six is a faculty development research skills program designed for rural and remote physician educators to enhance their capacity for research and scholarly work. Launched this past month, 6 for 6 will accept six physicians a year into an educational program that will provide them with the knowledge, skills and support to undertake their own research project. This program has funding to bring the six participants together for six sessions of project development with customized education sessions, peer support and individual mentoring. Integral to face-to-face meetings, participants will also have access to eLearning resources (podcasts, web based and mobile learning) to enhance their scholarship skills. Participants will have the opportunity to bring their research project to fruition with the support of a faculty mentor and research assistant who is dedicated to this project. 6 for 6 participants will gain the skills through this program to help others and foster research and scholarly work in their own communities and networks. We have funding approved for three years which should allow 18 rural and remote physicians to hone their research skills and undertake the research they have always wanted to undertake. In the next issue of Family Medicine Matters I will discuss skills for competency based education. For further information on faculty development, contact me at [email protected].

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research update The Primary Healthcare Research Unit By Dr. Marshall Godwin The Primary Healthcare Research Unit – referred to fondly as the PHRU by those who work there or are associated with it – has been around for eight years now. We started with sufficient space for the Dr. Marshall Godwin director, the administrative assistant, and the research associate back in the fall of 2005 but very quickly became cramped as we added project-based research assistants and research faculty until we exploded out of the first floor of the Health Science Centre and into our current wonderful space on the fourth floor of the Janeway Hostel. Currently we have three core faculty members appointed to the PHRU, four hard-funded staff, and a number of project funded staff which include a research nurse, a database manager, seven project funded research assistants, and two program evaluators. We also have an increasing number of graduate students who are being supervised by our core faculty members. Over time, the number of other faculty members who have taken an interest in research has increased and the PHRU has been there to help them develop successful funding applications and carry out their research projects. In addition to the ongoing work of applying for grants, conducting research, and then publishing our results, the PHRU also has a number of ongoing programs. These include the annual Primary Healthcare Partnership Forum (PriFor), the annual Primary Report, the Research and Evidence Based Medicine Scholarship Program, and the Six For Six Program. Involvement in research education is increasing as well; not only through Dr. Aubrey’s work with the research/audit/EBM component of the residency program curriculum but also in the Clinical and Community Health graduate programs. Both Drs. Godwin and Asghari teach in these graduate programs. Recently, they have also both developed new courses for these programs in medical geography (Asghari) and Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis (Godwin).

Patient Safety in the Primary Care Setting Much of the research in the realm of patient safety has focused on adverse events in the hospital setting; however over the last couple years there is an increased attention on patient safety within the primary care setting. Researchers are trying to gain an understanding of the concept of patient safety within primary care, identify the risks to patients, and evaluate actions taken to prevent or alleviate the impact of adverse events. A deeper understanding of these issues are needed to advance patient safety in this setting, but the literature to date does support the following strategies to improve patient safety: documenting and sharing information about patient safety incidents in an effort to learn from them, identifying benchmarks, including patients and families in the development of patient safety strategies and quality improvement, and placing an increased emphasis on patient safety educational programming across the continuum of learning. Over the coming months, our discipline will be reviewing opportunities to include innovative patient safety and quality improvement curricula within our programs.

We will continue our work towards increasing the research profile of the Discipline of Family Medicine for both faculty and residents.

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new and noteworthy big news! Pauline Duke and Norah Duggan joined forces with others across the country on June 17, 2013, in speaking out about the proposed budget cuts to health care for refugees.

At the 2013 Family Medicine Education Forum, the following physicians received awards:

Congratulations to Leslie Rourke on her promotion to professor as of September, 2013. Susan Avery, assistant professor, Shea Heights Community Health Centre, was married on July 19, 2013 in Placentia, NL. Congratulations Susan! Her daughter Paige Elizabeth Ennis also celebrated her first birthday in November 2013. Congratulations to our residency program director, Danielle O’Keefe, who married Dave White on Oct. 5, 2013 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON. awards

Dr. Roger Butler, right, received the Family Physician of the Year Award from the NL Chapter of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, presented by Dr. Gary Tarrant.

Cheri Bethune received the 2013 Primary Care Researcher of the Year award which was presented at PriFor in November, 2013. The award was presented by Marshall Godwin, director of the Primary Healthcare Research Unit.

Bob Miller was awarded the 2013 CAME Certificate of Merit for MUN. The award promotes, recognizes and rewards faculty committed to medical education in Canadian medical schools.

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A CFPC Award of Excellence was presented to Dr. Jared Butler of Grand Falls-Windsor. From left: Dr. Charlene Fitzgerald, president of the NL Chapter of the College of Family Physicians; Dr. Shelley Sullivan, a family physician in Grand Falls-Windsor; Dr. Butler; and Dr. Marie-Dominique Beaulieu, president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

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family practitioners. Dr. Steve Darcy, right, received the 2013 Gus Rowe Teaching Award, presented by family medicine resident Dr. Raie Lene Kirby.

Dr. Mohamed Ravalia presented the 2013 Dr. Craig Loveys Award to Dr. Steve Parsons, right. This award is presented annually by the Discipline of Family Medicine to a specialist in recognition of excellence in teaching family medicine residents.

Gordon Stockwell – Medical Student Scholarship. The value of each scholarship is $10,000. Scholarships were presented at the Family Medicine Forum (FMF) 2013 in Vancouver, BC, November 7-9, 2013. The recipients receive complimentary FMF registration and an additional amount up to $1,000 to offset travel and other expenses to attend FMF 2013. Dr. Robin Clouston – Medical Student Leadership Award. Award recipients were invited to participate in the Medical Student and Family Medicine Resident Leadership Workshop, which also took place during the FMF. Each Medical Student Leadership Award consists of complimentary FMF registration and up to $1,000 to offset travel and other expenses to attend FMF 2013. CFPC – NL Chapter Awards Black Bag Essay Contest – This is a new award valued at $500. It was offered this year to the second-year medical student completing the Black Bag course who wrote the best essay around the theme Describe Family Medicine Twenty Years from Now. Dean Ryan was the winner.

Dr. Cathy MacLean presented 2013 Yong Kee Jeon Award to Dr. Sonny Collis. This award is presented each year by the family medicine residents to physician teachers in the program who meet the following criteria: an exemplary physician; a laudable teacher, able to communicate knowledge and skills with sensitivity and humour; and an interest in sharing those aspects of his or her skills and ideals which are particularly pertinent to good

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new and noteworty MUN medical students raise record amount for national scholarship fund And the winner is… MUN’s medical school! Members of the Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG) at Memorial raised a total of $9,122 this year through the annual Walk for the Docs of Tomorrow, a fundraiser for the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC). This is an unprecedented amount that any FMIG has ever raised. In total, the walk raised over $33,000 this year with everyone’s effort. Money raised by Walk for the Docs helps support 17 annual scholarship of $10,000 for medical students – one for every medical school in Canada. The scholarships are offered by CFPC, in conjunction with the Research and Education Foundation (REF). Thanks to the significant donations to the REF from Scotiabank and CFPC members, hundreds of medical students across Canada are achieving their dream of becoming a family doctor.

On Oct. 26, during the 25th Annual Scientific Assembly of the NL College of Family Physicians of Canada, students and faculty members braved the rain for the Walk for the Docs.

More News... • It is projected that academic offices of family medicine will relocate in the fall of 2014. We will keep you apprised of this move as things evolve. • Shea Heights Community Health Centre physicians, staff and their families joined in the Christmas festivities within the community of Shea Heights by participating in the Christmas parade.

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Education Danielle O’Keefe completed a master of science (medicine) in clinical epidemiology in May, 2013 at Memorial University. Her thesis was titled The Effect of an Intensive Nurse Home Visit Program on SelfAssessment of Health and on Social Engagement in the Independently Living Old Elderly. Kath Stringer is currently working on a master in clinical science (family medicine) through Western University. The broad focus of her thesis is primary care of adults with developmental disabilities. Patti McCarthy, medical education specialist with the Discipline of Family Medicine, is working on her PhD (education), with a focus on medical education and patient safety. She recently received over $62,000 in grant monies for her work from the Medical Council of Canada and through the Enhancing Health Care in Newfoundland and Labrador (EHCNL) grant competition. Her work focuses on the development of a valid and reliable 360° patient safety assessment tool for residents.

comings and goings Comings... faculty On March 11, 2013 we welcomed Dr. Cathy MacLean as the new chair of the Discipline of Family Medicine. Dr. MacLean brings with her a wealth of leadership experience, having served as head of the Family Medicine Department, University of Calgary, for over five years. She was previously president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) from 2009-2010. The Discipline of Family Medicine would like to congratulate Dr. Lyn Power (Burin) on her appointment as assistant professor of family medicine. Lyn is off to a great start, with residents training in Burin under a longitudinal integrated model and planning many educational initiatives. Staff The Discipline of Family Medicine welcomes Sarah Eustace as academic program assistant within the Emergency Medicine/ Undergrad Office. Sarah started with the discipline in June, 2013. The discipline welcomed back Stacy Hicks as core content secretary within the postgraduate academic office. Ms. Hicks was seconded to a position with the Rural Medical Education Network office and returned to the Discipline of Family Medicine on Oct. 21, 2013. You can contact Ms. Hicks via email ([email protected])or phone (777 6743) on issues related to core content and behavioural medicine. We would also like to welcome Katelin Kenny as the intermediate clerk stenographer within our Postgraduate Office. She started with us on Aug. 14, 2013.

Dr. Peter Rogers will be replacing Dr. Gregory Brown as residency program director (Enhanced Skills in Emergency Medicine Program) during Dr. Brown’s sabbatical from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. Goings… Faculty Dr. Gerard Farrell (associate professor and director of the eHealth Research Unit) will be on sabbatical until Aug. 31, 2014.

Dr. Pauline Duke (professor, Family Practice Unit) will be on sabbatical until Sept. 1, 2014. Dr. Duke will continue her work with the MUN Med Gateway Project. Her current research projects include: Investigating Celiac Disease in Newfoundland and Labrador; HPV self-collection study; and Investigation of Cancer Rates in the Argentia region and Refugee Health. Dr. Leslie Rourke (professor, Family Practice Unit) will be on sabbatical from Jan. 1- April 30, 2014. During this time she plans to devote time to scholarly work related to the Rourke Baby Record (RBR) including the upcoming 2014 edition of the RBR, updates to the RBR website, updating the sixmonth well baby visit online module, completing a second online module on the 18-month well baby visit, and working on potential development of iPhone apps for parents and health professionals. Staff On Oct. 18, 2013, our discipline said farewell to Stacey Mercer, program secretary, as she accepted a new position as secretary in the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Arts.

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rural medical education network update By Dr. Mo Ravalia

A critical part of the expansion of the Faculty of Medicine is the development of the Rural Medical Education Network (RMEN). Dr. Mohamed Ravalia was appointed assistant dean for RMEN in January 2010. He continues to be based in Twillingate, where he is the senior medical officer, and has been assisted in developing the network in St. John’s by Maureen Kent as co-ordinator and Tina Dwyer as academic program coordinator. “We want to make sure we can provide students with the support they will need for extended periods in rural areas. In particular, student health is important, and we need to be able to deal with problems such as stress.”

With the expansion of the medical school, there is a need for greater capacity to educate medical students and residents in rural sites, and providing the appropriate infrastructure is a key mandate of RMEN. The most critical issues facing the expansion of medical education in rural areas are good accommodations and appropriate Internet connectivity. Historically the medical school has had superb preceptors throughout province and the Maritimes. While RMEN will be a network only for Newfoundland and Labrador, it will continue to liaise with preceptors in the Maritimes, and medical students will continue to gain experience in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. As co-ordinator of RMEN, Maureen Kent has been an invaluable innovator and brought a wealth of experience to the position. The appointment of physician leads and APA’s in each of the Regional Health Authority sites has been a crucial step in establishing an educational and administrative foothold for RMEN. As the rural network develops, Dr. Ravalia anticipates that closer linkages will develop for physicians and students to participate in team work with other health professionals. As students and residents spend more time at rural sites, Dr. Ravalia expects the experience will take advantage of layering as the more senior learners take the more junior learners under their wing. “I’m intrigued by how quickly this happens,” he said. “We want to make sure we can provide students with the support they will need for extended periods in rural areas. In particular, student health is important, and we need to be able to deal with problems such as stress.” Looking to the long term, Dr. Ravalia said the hope and vision of RMEN is that more medical students and residents will take up practice in rural areas. “The dream of many Newfoundland communities is to see their own young people come back as doctors and we look forward to being part of that process.”

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Teaching and Learning in Medicine By Dr. Steve Darcy

When first I donned the stethoscope and set out into the world of medicine as a practitioner in the summer of 1992 I was, admittedly, not entirely sure what would happen next. As things turned out, I was prepared pretty well to deal with uncertainty, to look for answers, to ask for help when I didn’t know what to do next. I was taught to recognize my colleagues as my greatest resource and that this collegiality needed to be fostered through respect and reciprocity. I was prepared for this by my teachers, many of whom still teach in the Family Medicine Program today. When done correctly, medical education fosters the ability to focus in on a point in minute detail and subsequently zoom out for the biggest possible picture.

One of the things I struggle with most when teaching students or residents is my own role as teacher. In my student days, the staff physician or lead resident were there to show me how to hand- tie surgical knots or to calculate the anion gap (something I had to be shown repeatedly!). They were the dispensers of knowledge as well as experience. I knew I needed them and they knew their roles. But what is my role in the age of the iPhone and instant information? Now students can watch a You Tube video revealing the epley manoeuvres. TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) answers all their questions about evidence, and diseases pretty well explain themselves online! A smart student, generally, has the answer before my middle-aged brain has even registered the question! The Triple C curriculum is based upon a basic set of truths that we have all learned throughout the practice of medicine. That is, our knowledge base is cumulative, iterative (continuous) and comprehensive in scope. When done correctly, medical education fosters the ability to focus in on a point in minute detail and subsequently zoom out for the biggest possible picture. While remaining true to its roots in the singular facts of evidence, it also offers a manifold of applications, all of which may be appropriate to any given clinical situation. For it to be fully effective, medical knowledge has to be contextualized, and this can only happen when someone with more experience interprets and reflects upon the unique clinical encounter for the learner with less experience. Furthermore, what is interpreted and reflected upon is not only a body of knowledge, but also a set of critical attitudes that must accompany the use of this knowledge. In his acceptance speech as Family Physician of the Year (Corner Brook, October 2013), Dr Roger Butler reminded us that at the heart of every excellent family physician is humility. The learner who approaches the clinical encounter with empathy and humility will significantly improve their chances of responding in a helpful manner to the patient that is before them.

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teaching TIp

an Interprofessional perspective

By Wendy Graham

teaching tip - our learners do not work for the cbc It’s very tempting in busy clinical practice to tell our learners that they’re doing a great job. When we are rushed it’s even more tempting to have them tell us a story, only to have us carry on with the likely diagnosis and management plan. The trouble is…. that would mean that learners are reporters. And frankly, even very junior medical students are not! They are not journalists and they do not work for the media. They are medical learners and they need lots of practice in interpretation and management of information. They need practice in conveying management plans to patients and in developing shared decision making. Indeed the ReporterInterpreter-Manager-Educator (RIME) model has some predicted time frames around when learners would progress through the stages of reporter, interpreter, manager and educator. These projectors however are based mainly on the medical expert domain of CanMEDs. Some new learners have fantastic skills in selectivity and prioritization. Some personify the principles of family medicine as junior medical students. Yet some senior residents are reluctant to commit to a diagnosis. To spare any learner from providing a case summary, a differential diagnosis and a treatment plan, is to spare them of the scrapes and bruising of learning. We cannot rob them of critical thinking. We can give feedback with kindness but it’s unlikely anyone will learn to ride a bike without a few scrapes. Some embrace it naturally from the onset. Others need a gentle nudge. A few might need you to push that bike to get them going! They’re all different but none of them are only reporters, and they all have to ride the bike. Better to learn early! For more teaching tips please click the following link to access teaching tips that were suggested by our own faculty at the 2013 Family Medicine Education Forum in Humber Valley. www.med.mun.ca/familymed/teachers/Teaching-Tips.aspx.

a pharmacist’s point of view By Lisa Bishop

The Shea Heights Community Health Centre is a rewarding practice environment. I’ve been working there for the last seven years as a family practice pharmacist in a position that I developed when I first started there in 2006. The health centre is an interdisciplinary teaching clinic that includes family physicians, a social worker, nurses, a pharmacist, medical residents and other learners. In this collaborative environment, I’m able to bring my expertise and focus on pharmacotherapy to the table. Being able to conduct complete medication histories with the patients and provide comprehensive pharmacy recommendations is an extremely valuable part of our approach and philosophy for patient care. The interactions that are enabled by an interdisciplinary clinic include not just the formal meetings that we regularly schedule, but also corridor consults. A more intimate working relationship across the health care team means that communication barriers are broken down and we reap the benefits of that. This not only improves our appreciation of the expertise offered by our colleagues, but it also provides an incredible opportunity for learning and professional development. With information constantly changing, in this environment we are able to learn from each other and keep each other current. Those benefits are ultimately passed on to our patients.

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keeping track Faculty annual reviews are being held December 10-14, 2013. The Family Medicine Executive Committee is meeting on January 7, 2014. Fridays with Family is an informal lunch-time session that has become a weekly staple for many students. Each week, different family physicians or residents are invited to speak to the group about their practices and roles in the community. A session on Nov. 22, 2013 featured residents speaking about their experiences in Haiti. The next session is scheduled for Jan. 10, 2014 and the topic is Geriatric Care-Myths and Realities Revealed. For more information please contact Sarah Eustace at [email protected]. A Strategic Planning Retreat is tentatively scheduled for February 19-20, 2014. We are still in the planning stages for this event and once things are confirmed updates will be sent to faculty. Her work focuses on the development of a valid and reliable 360° patient safety assessment tool for residents. Choices for Youth: Each December, the Family Medicine Interest Group (FMIG) collects funds, toiletries and small clothing items for Choices for Youth, a local charitable organization that helps underprivileged youth. Collection boxes will be placed in classrooms as well as in the Family Medicine Unit, HSC. Early in the New Year, FMIG will begin planning for their Procedures Day as well as their Wilderness Medicine weekend. John Ross Commemorative Walk: Our 13th annual hike in honour of Dr. John Ross will take place in the spring of 2014. Details related to specific date and location have not yet been determined. An update will be provided in the next newsletter (April). We welcome urban and rural/community based faculty and preceptors, staff, residents, and allied health care professionals to join us.

From left: family medicine residents Janelle Schneider, Naila Debbache Laura Edwards and Sarah Hann spoke about their experiences in Haiti with Team Broken Earth.

Conferences This was a very busy year with regards to attendance at many local national, and international conferences by many of family medicine’s faculty, staff, residents and students. Some of the notable conferences include: Society of Rural Physicians of Canada (SPRC, Victoria, BC), Association of Medical Education in Europe (AMEE; Prague, CR); International Conference on Residency Education (ICRE; Calgary, AB), Family Medicine Education Forum (FMEF; Humber Valley, NL), NAPCRG (Ottawa, ON), Family Medicine Forum (FMF, Vancouver, BC). Upcoming Conferences 2014 • Society of Rural Physicians of Canada (SPRC): Banff, AB, March 2014 • International Conference on Residency Education (ICRE): Toronto, ON, Oct. 23-25, 2014 • Family Medicine Education Forum, Faculty of Medicine: St. John’s, NL, October, 2014 • North American Primary Care Research Group (NAPCRG): New York, NY, November 2014 • Family Medicine Forum: Quebec City, November 2014 • The Primary Healthcare Partnership Forum (PriFor): St. John’s, NL, November 2014 • Canadian Society of Addiction Medicine Annual Conference: Ottawa, ON, Oct. 16-18, 2014

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CONTACT INFORMATION Discipline of Family Medicine Faculty of Medicine Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John’s, NL CANADA A1B 3V6 Chair’s Office Telephone: 709 777 6742 Fax: 709 777 8956 Academic Offices Postgraduate: 709 777 6743 Postgraduate (Emergency Medicine): 709 777 6971 Family Medicine Undergraduate: 709 777 6183/8310 Fax: 709 777 7913 www.med.mun.ca/familymed

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