CFMS SIGS 2019-2020

Coast Clinic

We are preparing to launch a student-run clinic (SRC) in the Coast Mental Health Resource Centre, a facility that provides low-cost meal and social programs for vulnerable populations in downtown Vancouver, by September 2021. The SRC will integrate the existing social services with new healthcare services by providing basic health services under a supervised setting. This initiative will help fill gaps in the accessibility of healthcare, as well as increase trust between marginalized individuals and the healthcare system. Participating in the clinic will also provide students with the opportunity to develop their advocacy and clinical skills while strengthening relationships with vulnerable patients. Through hands-on experience at the SRC, medical students in the province will become equipped with the skills to serve marginalized communities in their training and beyond.

TO-SONO: POCUS Training Conference, MUSIG x UofT POCUS IG MedEd Accessibility Project

TO-SONO, a non-profit ultrasound conference run by students, will bring together trainees from medical schools across Eastern Canada for two days of hands-on point-of-care ultrasound training by some of Canada’s top experts in ultrasound education. POCUS courses come with astronomical price tags making them out of reach to most medical trainees. TO-SONO, however, will offer top-quality POCUS training at a fraction of the price while fostering interuniversity collaboration and knowledge exchange.

The McGill Ultrasound Interest Group (MUSIG) and the University of Toronto Point-of-Care Ultrasound Interest Group (UofT POCUS IG) are student-led initiatives with the mandate of increasing students’ access to ultrasound training and technology to ensure that medical students are at the front lines of the current revolution in bedside medicine. Together, they will build off the success of MTL-SONO established in 2019 in order to bring affordable POCUS training to more students across Canada by expanding to the Toronto region.

MedReal

MedReal is an initiative that seeks to enrich undergraduate medical education by incorporating and engaging patients, caregivers, and patient-care experts in discussions about health care. We aim to create a parallel curriculum taught by patients and patient-care experts to improve communication skills, empathy, and emotional intelligence in pre-clerkship medical students.

Dalhousie Medicine - 3D Printing Clinical Creative Space

The 3D Printing Clinical Creative Space is an initiative started at Dalhousie Medical School to provide an opportunity for medical students, residents, and physicians to engage with 3D printing and additive manufacturing tools to facilitate clinical innovation. Whether for creating medical models for education purposes or prototyping medical devices, the Clinical Creative Space is dedicated to helping provide access and support for medical students and professionals to develop their solutions.

The 3D Printing Clinical Creative Space also serves to introduce medical students to engineering and design principles to support present and future projects throughout their medical education and future careers. This initiative also serves to connect medical students with like-minded residents and physicians interested in technology across the Atlantic region.

Website: clinicalcreative.com [currently under construction]

Her Health: A Women's Health Program for Refugee and Immigrant Women of St John's, NL

Her Health is a student-run women’s health initiative at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Faculty of Medicine which aims to improve access to health information among immigrant and refugee women living in St. John’s and surrounding areas. To achieve this goal, our program offers a series of in-person group information sessions focused on a variety of women’s health related topics to newcomer women in our community.

Peer-Led Basic Life Support (BLS) Training Program for UBC Medical Students

The Peer-Led Basic Life Support (BLS) Training Program is beyond excited and humbled to have been chosen for the CFMS Student Initiative Grant. The funds received will greatly help us grow the program by training more peer-instructors thereby reaching more medical students to certify in BLS. We look forward to the opportunity to encourage peer-teaching and strengthen vital BLS skills for medical students to help them feel more confident in their clinical rotations.

MP-MD Apprenticeship

Given the impact of policy on health - especially in this time of COVID-19 - it is ever more crucial for the medical community to have an insider voice in politics. Enter, the MP-MD Apprenticeship. We aim to help medical students learn the behind-the-scenes of policymaking through apprenticeships and policy collaborations with their local political representatives.

Interested in joining as exec and/or apprentice? Email us at [email protected]

Facebook: @MPMD.Apprenticeship

Twitter: @MPMD_Apprentice

DDXED - a tool to shape the differential diagnosis for medical students

Picture a scenario: a person walks through the door with an unusual set of symptoms. You try to think of what they have but you’ve never seen anyone like this before. You can only think of 3 possibilities, but you know that there are probably many more.

You should ask for help but who do you even ask? Building a comprehensive differential diagnosis is challenging, especially for unfamiliar cases in a world where every patient is different.

Enter DDXED. DDXED is a tool that aims to help generate a full differential diagnosis. It aims to aid the clinician in thinking outside of the box. It aims to help students learn clinical thinking skills. It aims to help answer the question: what do I do next so that the patient can have a good outcome? At the heart of things, DDXED makes the complexities of medicine easier to understand when lives are at stake.

Medical Students for Choice Canadian Symposium on Family Planning

Medical Students for Choice, a North American organization that aims to improve reproductive health curricula in medical education, is pleased to announce the second edition of the Canadian Symposium on Family Planning. This one-day event, which will be taking place in Vancouver, is a unique opportunity for medical students to receive up-to-date information on patient-centred reproductive health provision in the context of the Canadian social and political environment. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from Canadian leaders in reproductive healthcare advocacy!

This year, topics have been tailored to meet the specific needs of Canadian medical students and will include lectures on specific challenges to abortion access, reproductive health needs of vulnerable populations, trauma informed care and access to abortion training in Canada. Hands on workshops throughout the day will allow students to practice manual vacuum aspiration as well as patient counseling techniques. Students will have the opportunity to showcase their reproductive health research projects and learn about new initiatives across Canada.

Overall, the initiative aims to bring together passionate student advocates nationwide in the hopes of improving the current status of reproductive healthcare in Canada. For more information and to register, visit https://msfc.org/conferences/canadian-symposium-on-family-planning/

MD Admissions Initiative for Diversity and Equity (MD AIDE)

MD Admissions Initiative for Diversity and Equity (MD AIDE) is a student-led initiative at the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry aimed at addressing the barriers to medical school admission. Given the need for greater social accountability and diversification within medicine, they collaborate with the faculty and community partners to support students applying to medical school who face financial barriers, as well as those from Indigenous and other underrepresented minority backgrounds. Students have access to a free MCAT and medical school interview preparation course, free official AAMC practice materials, donated MCAT books, subsidized transportation costs, and one-on-one mentorship from current medical students. A dynamic initiative, MD AIDE is always collaborating and evolving to better advocate for equitable, diverse, and inclusive medical education.

Reach Accés Zhibbi Interprofessional Education Opening Session

Service learning, social accountability, interprofessional education… What do all of these really mean? The answer: a fulfilling career working with caring, compassionate colleagues and incredibly resilient populations! Reach Accès Zhibbi (RAZ) Interprofessional Health Promotion is an organization that bridges the gap between health and social care students and persons living in vulnerable circumstances. The goal? To enhance the understanding of priority populations for the people who will become the future providers in our health/social care system.

Students from diverse disciplines (e.g. nursing, social work, medicine, radiation therapy, health promotion) learn about interprofessional education competencies to engage in collaborative community centred care through the development of health promotion workshops. Social accountability is the foundation of RAZ’s health promotion workshops. RAZ’s mission and vision statement underscore the WHO’s definition of social accountability by directing our workshops and research activities to the priority populations within our community (WHO, 1995).

Students are exposed to i) the realities of how the social determinants of health impact priority populations and ii) learn about each other and are challenged to work together collaboratively within community settings. RAZ is an innovative student-led interprofessional organization that increases student awareness of community health issues as well as the resources to support the social needs that are linked to health outcomes (Fraze & Brewster, 2019).

Click here for the finished RAZ 2021 Pocket Guide.

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) Workshop

We (the Suicide Awareness and Prevention committee) at the University of Ottawaa will be hosting an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) Workshop for medical students on our medical school campus. We were inspired to start this initiative due to the increasing trend of student suicide on various campuses around the nation. Our community has been deeply impacted by such crises and we hope the ASIST workshop will help answer many questions we have about dealing with such crises should they arise in the future.