I attended events last week here at the College of Medicine that were great examples of medical education expertise and scholarship and, for me, inspire great confidence in our college.

On Thursday night, I attended Surgical Grand Rounds. Drs. Cole Beavis of the Saskatoon Health Region and Gordon Kaban of the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region combined to do a great presentation at Saskatoon City Hospital on the use of simulation in surgical education. They covered the pedagogy and tools of effective simulation, including a discussion on debriefing. They provided many great examples of hi-tech simulation tools and more frugal approaches, including a trip to Rona to construct a simulation tool for emergency cricothyrotomy (emergency airway puncture).

In the Health Sciences Building, we have secured space for a surgical simulation facility and our advancement team is working with Drs. Beavis and Ivar Mendez (unified head of our Department of Surgery) to raise funds for simulation equipment. RQHR has had the advantage of the Dilawri Simulation Center since 2012, due to a generous donation from the Dilawri Foundation.

On Friday, the Department of Medicine had its Resident Research Days. I have had a chance to review the abstracts for the posters and oral presentations. They were excellent and I am told the quantity and quality have improved dramatically this year. Congratulations to the residency program director, Dr. Karen LaFramboise and the assistant program director for research for the Internal Medicine Residency Program, Dr. Terra Arnason. The Department of Medicine had its Research Day for faculty earlier in the week, on Tuesday.

The week was capped off for the Department of Medicine with its Research Days Banquet & Faculty Awards at Marquis Hall on Friday. There was a great turnout of faculty and residents on a beautiful evening on our campus. Many awards for both faculty and residents were handed out. I would like to highlight four awards Dr. Sam Haddad, the unified head of medicine, has instituted, and their recipients from the Department of Medicine:

• Researcher of the Year – Dr. John Gordon, Dr. Debra Morgan
• Teacher of the Year – Dr. Anne Paus Jenssen
• Clinician of the Year – Dr. Hassan Masri
• Administrator of the Year – Dr. Erik Paus Jenssen

The evening was capped off as all of the finishing postgraduate learners in year 3 were introduced along with their next program and destination that will see them complete their postgraduate education. Congratulations also to these residents and the department for its huge success in the Canadian Resident Matching Service!

Finally, this past Friday was our first annual Medical Education Research and Scholarship Day. This initiative was led by our Director of Faculty Development, Dr. Cathy Maclean, who with her usual energy, enthusiasm and organization, did a fabulous job. We had over 50 participants, as well as guest speaker Dr. Doug Myhre from University of Calgary, 16 posters, 45 abstracts, three oral presentations and various workshops. It was a great day and a great example of our strategic priority to improve medical education scholarship and research here at the College of Medicine.

After those two days of seeing such commitment to the College of Medicine and so many dedicated researchers and educators doing great work, I felt I really deserved a great weekend’s rest. I was bacheloring it this weekend as my wife Jane and our dog Murphy are at the Canadian Association of Emergency Physician’s meeting in Whistler where Murphy is sitting by a research poster that documents the impact of a therapy dog in the Emergency Room! So my “rest” was cleaning and painting my garage!! I hope you all had a better weekend than that. But if you want to see a really neat garage, come by anytime.

As always I welcome your feedback.