Newsletter
December 2007
Hello all! Welcome to the latest edition of Resident's Corner. The holiday season is upon us and before you take a well-deserved break we wanted to update you on on section activities.
CPS Residents Section welcomes Canada's newest paediatric training program
The Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) has had an affiliated paediatric specialty training program since 2003 in both Northeastern and Northwestern Ontario and accepted its first class of medical students in 2004. The programs have close links and are accredited through the University of Ottawa and McMaster University. Residents therefore get a mix of tertiary care and community based paediatrics throughout their training. In total, the program accepts three to four residents per year putting it on par with some other smaller/medium-sized programs in the country. This year the CPS will welcome a NOSM program representative to the Residents Section for the first time. We look forward to hearing from them in the near future.
Synchronized paediatric subspecialty application
We wanted to make sure all the residents were updated on the status of our efforts to establish a synchronized subspecialty application process for Canadian paediatric residents. The working group (including representation from the Paediatric Chairs of Canada, the Paediatric Program Directors, and the Paediatric Subspecialty Program Directors) that was formed last year has developed a proposed outline for the process as well as a business plan. This was recently presented to the post-graduate deans of the various Canadian medical schools and we are now awaiting feedback. We cannot yet say definitively if or when the trial year for synchronization will occur. We promise to keep you posted and please do not hesitate to contact the Resident Section executive should you have any questions or concerns.
Program and liaison updates
Dalhousie University/IWK
Kelly Cox, Program Representative
Greetings from Halifax where we have had our first taste of snow! Paediatrics at Dalhousie has faced some challenges with tight call schedules the past few months. Things are looking up as our first year residents have finished their buddy call and will start as juniors over the next few weeks. Our chiefs are looking forward to the introduction of the electronic call schedule maker. Hopefully it will help some of the frustrations of being chief!
We face further call challenges for next year as we will only have five seniors, however, our program director has assured us that we will continue graded call.
In other news, there has been a great deal of social activity with a ghost walk at Hallowe'en, dinners out to new restaurants, and an upcoming blood drive. We are busy organizing our Christmas Quiz, the last grand rounds of the year; essentially an opportunity for residents to tease the staff and vice versa. Always a popular show!
We are transitioning well to online evaluations (Web145) allowing more instant feedback of residents’ performance as well as our feedback to staff. We continue to have great teaching with our academic half-day as well as quick 30-minute sessions most mornings (Mock Codes, EKG, General Peds, Metabolics and an all time favourit, ID JEOPARDY).
Queen’s University
Vicki Scholten, Program Representative
A big hello from Queen’s University! Our residents began the fall with a fabulous two-day retreat, which featured several practical and useful sessions along with canoeing, swimming, and games to get to know each other a bit better. Since then many residents have been traveling for electives both across the country and internationally. This year we have also added a few new rotations for our senior residents, including a month in Toronto at the HSC doing various clinics and dermatology, and a supervisory rotation at the Children’s Outpatient Centre in Kingston. There has also been a formal arrangement made with paediatricians in Barrie, Ontario for a community rotation.
Meanwhile, in Kingston, a trial of new morning teaching formats, including interesting case-based rounds and GI/Gen. Surgery rounds has been a welcome change. Our paediatric in-patient ward has really developed into a smoothly run academic setting with the hospitalist system now in place for the second year. Although there is currently only one paediatrician acting in this role, we hope to expand this in future years.
We are all eagerly awaiting the festivities of the Christmas season and wish all residents across the country a Merry Christmas!!
B.C. Children’s Hospital/University of British Columbia
Shelina Jamal, Program Representative
Hello from rainy (but warm) Vancouver! We are amidst yet another busy year. Over the past few months we have focused a lot more of our energy into research and research education. Our chief residents arranged for our academic half-days to now include one afternoon a month devoted entirely to research lectures and discussions. We also have one lunch session a month to discuss our current projects and address any questions we may have. Because of these efforts, many residents have submitted abstracts to and plan to attend the Western Society for Pediatric Research in Carmel, CA in January 2008. We have also been preparing our abstracts for the CPS Annual Conference.
Aside from research, we have continued our efforts in global and international health. We have a resident exchange with Sydney, Australia that will continue this year. One resident is due to return from South Africa after a one-year stay while another plans to take her place. The UBC Brighter Smiles program, a paediatric focused initiative on the promotion of oral health in Uganda, has been granted funding to send one of our residents for a two-month trip in 2008.
From a social aspect, our famous staff-resident hockey challenge is underway, the teams are hard at work for the upcoming Malpractice Cup in March 2008. Let’s hope the residents’ winning streak continues! Our annual resident retreat is scheduled for Nov 16-18 in Whistler, B.C. We are all excited for a weekend of socializing, bonding, and skiing!
We look forward to meeting our fellow paediatric colleagues at the CPS conference in Victoria and having the opportunity to show off our beautiful province!
American Academy of Pediatrics Annual Conference Update
Ereny Bassilious, Co-President, CPS Residents Section
This year was my first time attending the AAP annual conference. It took place in San Francisco and was a pretty exciting conference. I met with the residents section executive committee with the aim of discussing how to strengthen ties between American and Canadian residents. In the AAP, both Canada and USA are divided geographically into different districts. Each district has American resident representatives from each paediatrics program as well as a Canadian representative from each of the Canadian programs. These residents meet during their district meetings to discuss issues they are having and to collectively draft resolutions for the coming year. Resolutions could vary from plans for local advocacy projects to lobbying with politicians for different paediatric issues. It was interesting to listen to the intricacies of the US health care system and to compare it with Canada’s.
With the AAP resident executive committee we plan on increasing resident interaction across the border by trying to take a more active role. We hope the different district representatives can help with this process. Also, we will hopefully have a contribution by an AAP rep to our newsletter starting with the next edition. Finally, wouldn’t it be fun to organize social events to get to know our American colleagues at the next CPS conference in Victoria?
Hospital Paediatrics Section Update
Heather Leonard & Thea Chibuk, Co-Liaisons
Hello from the resident reps of the Hospital Paediatrics Section! Our section, having been established just over two years ago, is still in the beginning stages of development and there are many exciting opportunities and resources currently underway. In-patient paediatric care has become a diverse and complicated area of paediatric medicine. Our section was developed to support individuals working in this field and to help stay informed on current hospital practices.
Over the next year, our section is intending to develop a “Hot Topics Forum” via an e-mail sub group that all section members are privy to, if interested. This forum will involve discussions surrounding current hot topics in paediatric medicine. We are currently working on developing ‘Section Practice Points’, ‘Subspecialty Notes’, and ‘Best Paediatric Hospital Medicine Articles’ that will be accessible via our website. The section is also hosting several multidisciplinary telehealth talks throughout the year, the most recent of which was “Imaging and Surgical Options in Paediatric Empyema” from the Stollery Children’s Hospital site. Please stay tuned for more sessions throughout the year.
As you can see, we intend to be quite a busy section this year and are very excited to develop and share these resources with everyone! Membership is free for residents and there is no limit to the number of sections you can join. With all of the above-mentioned developments, our section has a lot to offer paediatric residents and we encourage you to join!
Well that’s it for this edition of Resident’s Corner. Thanks to all those who have made submissions. Look forward to the next edition this spring and enjoy the holidays!
Residents Section Executive
Posted: December 2007
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