Zara is a third year resident who walks out of the trauma bay after running an unsuccessful pediatric resuscitation. As she reflects on the experience, she feels as though she struggled with effectively communicating during the post-resuscitation de-brief. Zara realizes that she struggles with balancing processing her own emotions while communicating with the team. She wishes she had someone who could coach her in ‘soft skills’ such as leadership, wellness and resilience. Emergency medicine …
Medical Coaching: Don Miguel Ruiz’s “Four Agreements”
In medicine and medical education, we’re often hyper-focused on medical content, rather than the art of medicine. I recently finished reading Don Miguel Ruiz’s book “The Four Agreements“1, and identified some excellent educational pearls for medical students, residents and practicing physicians; pertaining to self-awareness and belief systems. In his book (albeit with a rather religious theme) Ruiz walks the reader through what he calls the Four Agreements – contracts to make with oneself in order to …
CaRMS Rodeo – How to prepare for a crazy ride
In the Canadian Residency Matching Service(CaRMS) applicants apply to all programs and, if selected for interview, rank these programs. The residency programs also rank all the interviewees [which is becoming increasingly difficult]. The computer spits out a match. In bull riding, the rider is matched to the bull randomly before the competition, however, since 2008 some ranked riders are allowed to choose their own bulls from a bull draft for selected rounds in PBR …
Making the Most of Chart Reviews
A few months back Dr Eddy Lang (@EddyLang1) [Co-editor of the Royal College Research Guide] graced us with his kind and friendly personality and dropped some pearls on retrospective chart reviews. Medical Record Review [MRR] Research in General aka Chart Reviews “Chart reviews don’t get the respect they may deserve” Dr Lang Dr Lang lamented the fact that MRR doesn’t get the street cred it deserves. This is large part because of a historical …
Email Etiquette: Thou Shalt Not CC Everybody
I was reflecting on a recent conversation with my sister-in-law about someone who sent a farewell email to her entire company. We debated the appropriateness of this, and email etiquette in general. It made me think of stupid things that I have done with email. I thought that I’d share. Ever hit “reply all” by accident and sent a message disparaging someone? √ CHECK – This goes down as one of the most …
Publish your Research: Insights from Dr. Brian Rowe
Dr Rowe is pound-for-pound one of the best EM researcher in Canada, especially considering he completed the majority of his research on a shoe-string budget while managing a formidable career. His prolific and high-quality research has resulted in the publication of one book, 28 book chapters, and over 385 peer-reviewed manuscripts. It goes without saying he has a wealth of experience that, he humbly admits, came with many failures along the way. He is …