By Lisa Dutton

During McGill’s Health Sciences Convocation, held earlier this week, in addition to receiving their diplomas, a number of graduating students from across the Faculty of Medicine were recognized with awards, including the 18 MDCM graduates named to the Dean’s Honour List. Following the ceremony, several of the MDCM graduates spoke with us to reflect on their experience with McGill’s MDCM program, and offering advice to future generations that will follow in their footsteps.

Dr. Sandrine Couture, who received the Holmes Gold Medal, awarded to the student with the highest aggregate standing in the entire medicine curriculum, offered advice to the incoming class of MDCM students who will begin their medical education in August. “The medical school journey is one of tremendous personal and professional growth. As I look back, I realize this growth arose from situations and opportunities that I could not have anticipated. For example, when I reviewed consultation requests, I could never have predicted which patient interactions would become the most meaningful to my education. I learned most from rotations that were different from what I had envisioned and pushed me out of my comfort zone. I found the most dedicated mentors in supervisors that challenged me. I met the most inspiring research supervisor by taking a chance at contacting a professor after an interesting lecture. I discovered the most supportive colleagues in complete strangers. Lessons in medical training do not come when you expect them. To have a chance at embracing it all, my greatest advice would be to always keep an open mind and to make a conscious effort to be present and engaged every single day.” This summer, Dr. Couture will begin her residency in Internal Medicine at McGill.

Another member of the Dean’s Honour List, Dr. Philippe A. Bilodeau is heading to Massachusetts to start his neurology residency at Harvard University.  Looking back on his undergraduate education, he reflects on how much he has learned from the patients in his care. “The gentleman with metastatic pancreatic cancer, who clings to a picture of his wife and children. The middle-aged businessperson diagnosed with ALS. The 20-year-old woman in the neuro-intensive care unit after a car accident. Caring for sick people is a privilege, and it taught me a lot about perseverance and resilience. Helping people through illness and tragedy is bitter sweet. Bitter of course because of the tragic nature of sickness and death. But sweet also, because there is significance in being with someone when they are most vulnerable, when they are raw, terrified, when they look for you to give them answers. The significance of a therapeutic touch, the trust that patients place in you when they tell you what they would never tell anyone else. Doctors like to see themselves as ship captains, heroically avoiding icebergs, preventing the boat from sinking. I would say that we are rather navigators, helping patients sail an uncharted sea, to use Paul Kalanithi’s words. We try steering the ship as best we can, but we are often powerless against storms and waves. My experiences in medical school taught me so much about human suffering, about the role of the physician as a doctor, of course, but also as a healer. I have grown both professionally and personally, and I am infinitely grateful to my patients for having taught me so much.”

Dr. Tianwei Ellen Zhou completed McGill’s prestigious MDCM and PhD Program and will complete her residency in ophthalmology at the Université de Montréal. She says that she learned the role of a doctor is not only to treat patients, but to educate them as well. “Being a physician goes beyond treating patients in your office or operating room. On a broader scale, we also have the social responsibility to educate patients and to empower them with proper medical knowledge. With the rapid evolution of medical science and technology, patients may find it difficult to discern truth from disinformation. For instance, many believe that stem cell therapy is a panacea for all. That is why I am collaborating with Réseau Vision du Québec to organize le Café scientifique (a casual get-together) to provide proper information on stem cell therapy to the general public. The ultimate goal is to help patients make decisions based on fact not fiction.” Dr. Zhou received the 2019 Scriver-Steinberg Convocation Prize in Human Genetics, recognizing a person with exceptional potential to translate knowledge into practice to make a difference in the well-being of patients, families, or community.

The following MDCM students received awards in recognition of their outstanding academic performance and their abilities as learners, healers, leaders, researchers and/or patient advocates.

Jessica Drury
Brian Newton Memorial Award is given to the student with the highest standing in the Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship.

Christina Bianchini
Newell W. Philpott Award is given to a student in recognition of his or her academic achievement and clinical excellence.

Brian Tran
John H. Altshuler Prize in Family Medicine is awarded to the medical student with the highest mark in Familly Medicine clerkship.

Sandrine Couture
J.Francis William Prize in Medicine and Clinical Medicine is awarded to the student with the highest standing in the Internal Medicine clerkship.

Ashley Tritt
Montreal Children’s Hospital Prize for Pediatrics Excellence is awarded to the student with the highest standing in Pediatrics.

Sophie Jaarsma
Mona Bronfman Sheckman Psychiatry Prize is given to the student with the highest academic standing in Psychiatry.

Jessica Drury
Psychiatry Prize is awarded to a student who has shown the most promise in this field.

Christina Bianchini
Cambell Keenan Memorial Prize in Clinical Surgery is awarded to a student who has shown the highest proficiency in Clinical Surgery.

Natasha Caminsky
Robert Forsyth Prize is awarded to a student who has shown particular ability in all branches of Surgery.

Soumaya Bouhout
Dr. Mark Cohen Prize in Ophtalmology is awarded to a student with strong academic standing and who will be pursuing a Canadian residency in Ophthamology.

Jennifer Silver
H.S. Birkett Memorial Prize in Otorhinolaryngology is awarded to a student who has shown outstanding performance in Otolaryngology.

Sandrine Couture
E.David Sherman Award in Geriatric Medicine is awarded to the most outstanding student in the field of clinical geriatric medicine.

Sandrine Couture
Alexander D. Stewart Prize (professionalism) is awarded to a student who presents in every aspect the highest qualifications to practice the profession.

Ann-Sophie Lafrenière
Dr. Allen Spanier Prize for Professionalism in Medicine is awarded to a student who has maintained high academic standing and exhibited a high standard of professionalism and compassion towards patients, their families, fellow students and University and hospital staff during the practice of medicine component of the curriculum.

Brian Tran and Xin Mei Liu
Elizabeth Ann Munro Gordon Prize (leadership) is awarded by the Faculty and student(s) who embodies the highest qualifications to practice medicine and has demonstrated outstanding leadership abilities.

Emily Parkinson
Reilly Madsen Prize (empathy) is awarded, on recommendations from faculty and students, to a student with good academic standing who had demonstrated exceptional warmth and empathy towards patients.

Sophie Jaarsma
Elaine E.L. Wang MDCM Humanitarian Prize is awarded to a student who has demonstrated excellence in humanitarian care and a caring attitude in his or her work. This may include, for example, work with a global health organization, or work with disadvantaged, homeless or stigmatized populations and patients locally natinally or abroad.

Brian Tran
Ronald Douglas Naymark Prize is given to the student who most enriches the life of the class in the eyes of his or her peers. The award seeks to recognize an individual who inspires trust and confidence, optimism and enthusiasm in his or her medical colleagues.

Jennifer Silver
The Strachan Alexander Hartley Award recognizes a student who demonstrates athletic leadership and academic excellence.

Ellen Zhou
The Scriver-Steinberg Convocation Prize in Human Genetics recognizes a person with exceptional potential to translate knowledge into practice to make a difference in the well-being of patients, families, or community. It is awarded to a student who has pursued research in the field of genetics and metabolism, or to a student who has either completed his/her Ph.D. as part of the MDCM & PhD Program, or has completed his/her PhD while in medical school.

Sarah Carroll McRae
The Dr. Joseph Tanzman Award is given to a student from the Province of New Brunswick.

Alexandra Laverde-Saad
CHAP Graduation Prize is awarded to a student who has undertaken the best community project within the Community Health Alliance Project (CHAP), with a view to affecting positive change in the society.

Pallavi Ganguli
McGill Alumnae Society Prize is given to a distinguished student for excellence and high academic standing.

Sandrine Couture
Holmes Gold Medal is awarded to the student graduating with the highest
aggregate standing in the entire medical curriculum.

Catherine Boudrias
Wood Gold Medal is awarded for the most outstanding clinical performance achieved by a student in the Clerkship Period.

Dean’s Honour List

Sandrine Couture (Mean average: 92.89)

Pallavi Ganguli (Mean average 92.30)

Oliver Schneider (Mean average 91.49)

Catherine Boudrias (Mean average 90.21)

Sabrina Nolan (Mean average 89.83)

Leslie Scarffe (Mean average 89.74)

Brianne Patterson (Mean average 89.27)

Eugène Brailovski (Mean average 89.11)

Henry Biem (Mean average 88.81)

Yi Tong (Mean average 88.66)

Nina Hébert-Murakami (Mean average 88.36)

Philippe-Antoine Bilodeau (Mean average 88.05)

Christine Audi (Mean average 87.58)

Jessica Lu (Mean average 87.35)

Robert Samberg (Mean average 87.21)

Joseph Mancini (Mean average 87.02)

Muriel Nader (Mean average 86.90)

Gabriel Crevier-Sorbo (Mean average 86.84)

Congratulations to all!

May 31 2019

By Vanessa Bonneau

When Salima Ramdani was still in high school she came to McGill for a few days to get an idea of what health professionals do.

“The camp changed my future,” she says. “I learned about the different health programs and exchanged ideas with counsellors. Seeing a diverse volunteer team, I could picture myself here.”

Today she is a medical student at McGill, where she makes time in her busy schedule to inspire the next generation of students.

Across Canada and beyond, post-secondary institutions are focused on promoting diversity, inclusion and equity. McGill is no exception.

Students like Ramdani in the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Dentistry are playing a crucial role in efforts to have a more representative student body in McGill’s health professional programs.

Over the past 10 years, to better understand who is enrolling in its undergraduate medical education program, the Faculty of Medicine has been surveying incoming students. Since 2017, the questionnaires are also given to new students in other health professional programs, including dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology.

Results showed that Indigenous and Black students were underrepresented in McGill’s health programs, as were students from low-income families and rural areas with small populations.

McGill has taken steps to remedy the imbalance, but the work continues, especially since the Faculty of Medicine has set higher diversity targets starting in 2022.

Students for change

Ramdani and fellow students are themselves tackling underrepresentation.

Three McGill student-run programs reach out to younger students, most of whom are still in high school, offering mentorship and hands-on experiences of various health professions.

The programs are affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine’s Social Accountability and Community Engagement Office, and its Widening Participation Committee, which is concerned with increasing diversity, equity and inclusiveness in the Faculty.

Dr. Nicole Li-Jessen, chair of the Widening Participation Committee, emphasizes how important the students are to the Committee’s work.

“They are so passionate and motivated,” says Dr. Li-Jessen, who is also an assistant professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders. “They bring the student point of view so we can tailor our efforts. As professors, we can be quite idealistic and removed. They provide perspective, impressions, feelings – what the students really need. Their interaction with the generation below them is very useful for shaping the program.”

“The students are our greatest ambassadors,” agrees Dr. Saleem Razack, Director of the Faculty of Medicine’s Social Accountability and Community Engagement Office and a professor of Pediatrics at McGill. “What we do is provide the scaffolding. That’s how we work together. The students are nearer to these younger students we’re trying to attract. They’re really in the best place to help us with recruitment.”

Hands-on experience

Each summer McGill’s Explore! Careers in Healthhosts high school students from low socioeconomic schools to get a hands-on experience of what different health professionals do day-to-day.

Explore! began as an afternoon event but has become a two-night, three-day summer camp. With a nine-student executive, current co-presidents and medical students Jessica Hier and Salima Ramdani have ambitious goals for the initiative.

Explore! is planning to add a follow-up event in the fall, focused on making participants competitive applicants to health professional programs. They’re also working to establish a mentorship program that would match each high school student from the summer camp with a student in a healthcare profession program at McGill, as well as a newsletter to engage parents.

“Going to the (Explore!) camp made me realize this could be my reality,” says Ramdani, now in her second year of medical school. She’s passionate about sharing what a career as a health professional can give students.

“They have the power to do great things, in the health care field and beyond. We’re showing them the different ways they could do so,” she says.

“This is something I can do too”

A second program, Health Outreach Projects (HOP), sends McGill student volunteers to school career days around Montreal, and organizes Health Professional for a Day events.

“As a student, as a young kid, you go to the doctor, you want to see someone who’s like you,” says Maria Gueorguieva, who is co-president of HOP with fellow Dentistry student Jiayi Li. The co-presidents and their executive are planning many of the same expansions as Explore!

Li became especially interested in diversity when she learned from a research project that while there are more women graduating from dental schools, it will take more time for those women to reach leadership roles in areas such as universities and professional associations.

“More women in dentistry, more people from different backgrounds, will encourage more people to say, ‘This is something I can do too,’” says Li.

The importance of support

The newest initiative, Supporting Young Black Students (SYBS), works with community groups to provide mentors to local high school students, and hosts popular community events.

When SYBS co-founders Lashanda Skerritt and Clement Bélanger Bishinga arrived at McGill, they started thinking and talking about how it was they had come to McGill’s Faculty of Medicine.

“I was realizing that if you don’t have the support, it’s really difficult to see yourself in the program, and to make yourself competitive for a program that’s really difficult to get into,” says Skerritt.

SYBS provides that kind of support through its mentorship program, community events and discussion panels. As part of the mentorship program, mentees attend regular workshops to gain exposure to clinical skills.

From the start, SYBS has worked with community groups in Montreal, including the Jamaica Association of Montreal and Montreal Community Cares Foundation, which have experience mentoring young people as well as connections to students who may benefit from a mentorship program like SYBS.

Last fall SYBS held an event with black health professionals.

“We did touch on underrepresentation, barriers, racism and systemic problems, but there was also a positive message – if you’re interested in helping people, doing social justice work and caring for patients, you can find a rewarding career in health care,” says Skerritt.

Diversity in experience

“Part of the work we’re doing is to be more conscious about the fact that there are a lot of different types of experiences that we don’t look at the same way,” says Skerritt.

She points out that not everyone can afford to participate in the activities that are popular for students applying to competitive health programs, like going abroad to work with disadvantaged populations, which in many cases is voluntary.

HOP, Explore! and SYBS are looking at other ways for young people to have the kind of experiences valued by an admissions office – perhaps through a shadowing program, where teenagers will work alongside a health student or professional.

“We’re trying to have important conversations about other ways people might show how they’re engaged in their community,” says Skerritt.

Widening participation, measuring impact

The Faculty of Medicine’s Widening Participation Committee is launching a longitudinal study to measure the impact of these student-run programs.

A new questionnaire will gather data on how participation in these programs increases interest in a health profession, and to what extent that translates into application and admission, at McGill or elsewhere.

The goal is to pilot the study with this summer’s Explore! Careers in Health camp cohort.

“We know from our surveys that we have students from underrepresented groups who participated in our programs,” says Dr. Razack. “The pathway programs are working, but we want more details.”

The students are keen to work on the longitudinal study. “We want to see what the impact is,” says HOP’s co-president Gueorguieva. “We enjoy doing this, but we want to make the most of our time and efforts.”

June 13 2019

Recent MDCM graduate Dr. Philippe-Antoine Bilodeau and recent nursing graduate Cassandra Veilleux are among those highlighted by McGill en français, promoting our francophone graduates.

Read more about them, and other graduates, here

June 14 2019

By Matthew Brett

This is part of an ongoing series to raise the profile of education, teaching and learning in the Faculty of Medicine and to advance the Faculty’s Education Strategic Plan (2017-22).

Fresh off the heels of their 2019 McGill Interprofessionalism Research Symposium on March 20, the McGill Association of Students in Healthcare (MASH) are already planning for next academic year.

The 2019 symposium saw students from a range of disciplines present posters and oral presentations along with a panel discussion about mental health.

“It’s inspiring to see our future interdisciplinary colleagues led by passion for their field,” said Sarah Aboushawareb, a PhD student in Family Medicine and MASH executive member. “The highlight of the symposium for me was just that: student-researchers being giving a platform and voice for their impressive work to stimulate discussion from interconnected healthcare fields. What better way to encourage the future of healthcare?”

Interprofessionalism and interdisciplinary education are core pillars of the Faculty’s Education Strategic Plan, so the Faculty education team was excited to meet the MASH executive. Dr. Annette Majnemer, Vice-Dean, Education at the Faculty of Medicine, met with MASH earlier this year.

“We think it’s great that faculties are putting more and more emphasis on interprofessionalism as this really is the future of healthcare,” said Aboushawareb.

MASH hosted a wine and cheese on January 30 on the theme of cancer survivorship with speakers including Family Medicine professor Dr. Gillian Bartlett-Esquilant.

Founded in 2016, MASH now represents 27 different  student associations and groups interested in healthcare and was created to increase interprofessional collaboration.

Their mandate is to create a forum for healthcare students and student groups to advance interprofessional education. They also promote research, innovation and knowledge sharing while providing opportunities for interprofessional collaboration.

Both on campus and in clinical settings, MASH advocates for safe, equitable and respectful environments for students from different health professions. The organization also represents students from the healthcare-related professions at the institutional level.

As for the academic year ahead, the members of MASH are electing new executive members and planning their wine and cheese along with the 2020 McGill Interprofessionalism Research Symposium.

They are inspiring faculty and administration with their leadership around interprofessionalism in the process, while fostering a new generation of interprofessional healthcare professionals.

MASH has an active Facebook page HERE and can be reached HERE.

June 26 2019

Attend our open house to learn more

At McGill, a select group of students has been accepted into the MDCM-PhD Program. They are training to be physician-scientists dedicated to research and patient care.  “Physician-scientists are particularly committed to the creation of new medical knowledge,” says Mark J. Eisenberg, MD, MPH, Director of the MDCM-PhD Program and Staff Cardiologist at the Jewish General Hospital. “They identify novel and clinically relevant questions at the bedside and use their knowledge and tools to research these questions. Then they take their research results and use them at the bedside.”

Guido Ivan Guberman is completing the PhD portion of the MDCM-PhD Program.  His research focuses on children with concussions. Using advanced forms of brain imaging, he is able to detect subtle forms of injury and use this to inform diagnosis and prediction of clinical outcomes. His career goal is to work as a pediatric neurologist treating children with a variety of brain injuries. He envisions using his research discoveries to offer his patients innovative care.

Click to see what attracted Guido to the MDCM-PhD Program.

McGill is seeking students passionate about research and health care. Join us at the annual MDCM-PhD open house. 

When: September 26, 2019, 18:30-20:00

Where: McIntyre Building, room 522, 1200 Pine Avenue West, Montreal

Guest speaker:
Lysanne Campeau, MDCM, PhD, FRCSC,
Assistant Professor of Surgery, McGill University,
Urologist, Jewish General Hospital,
Clinical researcher, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, McGill University

August 22, 2019

By Michelle Stoopler, McGill Medical student

For one special night this past June, Percival Molson Stadium was abuzz with movie fans rather than its usual audience of football fans.

Over 350 people attended a Night at the Stadium, in support of the Montreal Children Hospital’s oncology department. There were snacks and refreshments on sale, courtesy of food trucks Le Cheese and Gaufres et Glaces, as well as a silent auction. The night culminated with the screening of the film Grease on a massive screen in one of the field’s end zones.

The event was descibed as the highlight of the year by the group of McGill Medicine students responsible for putting it together in recognition of the importance of giving back to a cause near and dear to their hearts.

Photo: Sabrina Lasry-Shemie

“It was important for us to raise awareness about childhood cancer, as cancer is the most deadly disease among children from six months to young adulthood,” said Lea Sultanem, a third-year medical student and member of the organizing committee. “We hope that our event’s contribution will help children diagnosed with cancer, as well as their families.”

The event raised over $14,000 in support of children dealing with pediatric cancer, thanks in large part to the generous donations and support from charitable sponsors and event attendees. The cheque was officially presented to representatives of the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation on Wednesday August 28.

In light of such a successful event, the organizing team is looking forward to holding another fundraising event next year.

September 3 2019

By Matthew Brett

This is part of an ongoing article series to raise the profile of education, teaching and learning in the Faculty of Medicine and to advance the Faculty’s Education Strategic Plan (2017-22). 

Students from diverse disciplines are working together to launch the inaugural Rare Disease Interdepartmental Science Case Competition (RISC Competition) with a Meet and Greet on Thursday, September 19, to share details of the competition with interested students.

The competition is for undergraduate students in their second or third year from across the Life Sciences programs including Physiology, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, and Anatomy and Cell Biology.

Faculty are invited to encourage students to register for the Meet and Greet, follow the event on Facebook, or contact the competition organizers via email at: risc.competition@gmail.com

Students can sign up as “free agents” and be placed in an interdisciplinary team or form teams of their own, but there is a catch! To foster an interdisciplinary approach, a team cannot consist of more than two members from the same department.

“The fact that this is interdisciplinary – it’s a chance for students to come together and tackle a complex issue,” said Elya Quesnel, a recent graduate who helped initiate the project. “They only get a set of symptoms and they have to go and figure out what disease it is, why it’s happening, and what to do.”

Workshops will be held throughout the course of the academic year to help teams prepare for the case competition. Nearing the end of the academic year, each team will present their findings on the rare disease they worked on, its socioeconomic aspects, symptoms, treatment and therapies. A faculty panel will judge the presentations and pick winners!

“It’s a more interactive process where people can really talk to each other and use their own strengths to come together to formulate concrete results,” said Sara Nam, an undergraduate Life Sciences student managing communications for the competition. “It feels a lot more conducive to what we all want to do in the future rather than strictly reading a textbook over and over.”

As for faculty members, the competition organizers would love help promoting the competition to students and invite faculty to serve as case judges or provide cases and other ideas. Organizers are also hoping to connect with medical students and graduate students interested in acting as mentors, providing insight and guidance into applied research like this.

“It’s one thing to sit in a lecture hall and listen to a professor talk, but to actually apply this knowledge working with students from other departments is amazing, and it’s a great opportunity to network and interact with med students, grad students, librarians and profs,” said Michelle Yang, a third year Life Sciences student managing competition logistics.

September 6 2019

Chisasibi and Waskaganish in relation to Montreal.

Authors: Ana Elisa Sousa, John Aspler, Sébastien Belliveau and Megan McGill
Editors: Stephanie Scala and Li-Yuan Chen

John talking about neuroscience to students. Courtesy of Ana Elisa Sousa

In October 2018 and April 2019, BrainReach North, a science outreach organization for northern Indigenous communities run by McGill University graduate students in Neuroscience, sent volunteers to Chisasibi and Waskaganish, two Cree communities in the Eeyou Istchee territory in Northern Quebec. The objective of the student volunteers is to motivate kids to learn about science and the natural world as well as inspire them to employ a problem-solving approach in their daily lives.

The October 2018 trip to Chisasibi took place over three days.. During their stay, BrainReach North volunteers taught approximately 200 students at Waapinichikush Elementary School. Lessons given to students in grades 3 to 6 focused on a variety of topics, including:Why do animals have different brain shapes and sizes?; How do our brains trick us into seeing things that are not there?; and, How does our attention work?

Almost immediately after landing in Chisasibi, the volunteer PhD students from the Integrated Program in Neuroscience (IPN) John Aspler (since graduate) and Ana Elisa Sousa were whisked away to Waapinichikush Elementary School by Headteacher Sonam Dekhang, , to start their first lessons. Sonam played an integral role in helping BrainReach North organize this trip and acted as John and Ana’s guide during their visit.

In Chisasibi, children study in Cree until Grade 3 when classes are conducted in either French or English. John taught classes in French, while Ana taught students in English

John, Ana, and Sonam with Chisasibi in the background_Courtesy of John Aspler.

classrooms. They also met with teachers to show them new BrainReach North educational resources.

After the lessons, the volunteers had a chance to see the town, including the stunning bay at sunset and the Great River (from which Chisasibi gets its name), and spent some time in a mitchuap (a traditional shelter). They also visited the Chisasibi Heritage and Cultural Centre to learn about the town’s history. Chisasibi, as it exists today, was built in the early 1980s. After hydroelectric dams were constructed in the area, the old location of the town began to dwindle.

The last day of John and Ana’s visit was Halloween, which allowed them to see the amazing decorations that the students had made. Students were also dressed in creative costumes and had a pumpkin decorating contest to show off their creativity.

***************************************************************************************************************************

Sébastien and Megan present the human-human interface (HHI) from Backyard Brains. Courtesy of Sébastien Beliveau.

In April 2019, two other BrainReach North volunteers, then IPN Master’s students Megan McGill and Sébastien Belliveau travelled to Waskaganish. While this was Sébastien’s second outreach trip, it was Megan’s first.

Shaun McMahon, the principal who generously provided accommodations during Sébastien’s trip to Kuujjuarapik last year, was now at Waskaganish. Given the positive experience collaborating the previous spring, Shaun was eagerly on-board and instrumental in ensuring this trip to Waskaganish was a success. Alex Allard-Gray, a representative of BrainReach North’s collaboration with McGill’s Indigenous Health Professions Program (IHPP), also joined Sébastien and Megan on this trip.

Once the trio landed in Waskaganish, they were picked up by the school’s caretaker, Jimmy Jacob. After meeting with the school’s teachers, the volunteers were treated to some traditional soup and bannock before jumping into a packed schedule of teaching students.

Over the next two days, Alex presented information about the IHPP, while the BrainReach North volunteers taught neuroscience content to students ranging in grades from 7 to 11. Each lesson started with Alex greeting the students in his traditional language, Mi’kmaq. Given this language shares an Algonquian root with Cree, the students enjoyed trying to decipher what he was saying!

Sébastien followed with a general introduction to science, the brain, and how the nervous system functions. The latter was exemplified by using Backyard Brains’ human-to-human interface, permitting Megan (and perhaps overly eager students) to shock Sébastien’s muscles into action. He then spoke about how the brains of different animals have different properties, encouraging students to explain their reasoning as they tried to match pictures of different animal brains to specific animals.

Megan then presented a lesson about the gross neuroanatomy of the brain, including its various lobes and their functions, and how these integrate to permit us to think, perceive the world, and interact with it. Throughout the lessons, the team encouraged students to ask questions to help them engage with the scientific process. Lessons also included activities, such as demonstrating knee-jerk reflexes, brain slices prepared for viewing under microscopes, and Alex’s healthcare Jeopardy game.

On their last day, Sébastien and Megan went on a tour of Waskaganish offered by one of the local teachers, Henry Wischee. During this tour, they had the chance to see the facilities of the community, as well as the Rupert river rapids, which offered a beautiful view. For Megan, this outreach trip allowed her to feel immersed in the lives of the community members, seeing where they lived, played, learned, and embracing their cultural traditions.

It was a pleasure to meet so many curious students and dedicated teachers during our trips. We would like to thank all the teachers, students, and staff at many levels who facilitated our trips and enriched our experience in both schools and to say a special thank you to the Waapinichikush Elementary School Principal and Vice-Principal, Headteacher Sonam Dekhang, and Waskaganish School Principal Shaun McMahon.

We thank Alex Allard-Gray and the Indigenous Health Professions Program at McGill for their partnership during the Waskaganish trip; we look forward to more collaborations in the future. We would also like to thank the Integrated Program in Neuroscience for their financial support on this trip. Finally, we also express our sincerest gratitude to Malosree Maitra and Ana, the co-presidents of BrainReach North, as well as the rest of the administrative team for coordinating both trips and to our volunteers for embracing the project!

BrainReach North hopes to keep returning to the North in the future – to deepen our ties to its peoples, to motivate students to learn about science, and to appreciate the stunning nature found in Northern Quebec.

Links to trip blogs:

Chisasibi: https://www.brainreachnorth.ca/brainreach-north-blog/june-03rd-2019

Waskaganish: https://www.brainreachnorth.ca/brainreach-north-blog/mcgill-visits-waskaganish

October 10, 2019

By Lisa Dutton

The first one and a half years of medical school is a mixture of lectures and lab time.  Students then move into clinical practice, completing rotations at McGill affiliated hospitals and clinics as they prepare to  become responsible for patient care. On Friday, October 4, the Class of 2022 donned their white coats, symbolically marking this transition from layman to physician during the annual White Coat Ceremony.

The guest speaker was Dr. Beth Lown, Chief Medical Officer, The Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare.  One piece of advice she offered to students was to “take care not to let the white coat set you apart or above your patients. You cross the rubicon when you put on the coat.  You become a healer, you have power and authority…patients will open their hearts to you, share their lives with you.  This is sacred space…Let empathy and compassion drive your curiosity, drive your clinical reasoning to a higher level.”

The annual event is supported in part by a generous donation from Frederic H. Braun, MDCM’72 and Maureen Braun, a graduate of the McGill School of Nursing ’72.

*Photos by Owen Egan

The Wellness Break & Nap Room, found in the Lady Meredith Annex at the top of Peel street.

A creative and relaxing space, filled with all the tools you need to take a break; from cozy floor chairs, to peaceful wall art, lazy boy recliner chairs and motivational quotes!

This semester, two third-year medical students Gabriel Bouhadana and Adel Arezki decided to create the Wellness Break & Nap Room (WBNR), the first of its kind for McGill Medical and Dental students.

Adel Arezki, MDCM 2021 (left) and Gabriel Bouhadana, MDCM 2021 (right) on their first day of medical school.

The idea originated from the students feeling that a room in the Lady Meredith Annex was not being used to its full potential, in its occasional use as a storage room. After pitching their idea to the student body and winning a program-wide vote, the process was put in motion. With the help of the McGill Humanities & Arts in Medicine (McHAM) group and with support from the Medical Students’ Society and their Special Project Community Involvement (SPCI) Committee, the room was created over the summer and has been in use since the beginning of the 2019-2020 academic year.

The idea behind the WBNR was to create a unique space on campus where students would have the opportunity to rest between and after classes. On top of including recliner chairs, pillows, blankets and cozy rugs, the room is decorated with peaceful wall art, relaxing greenery, a chalk board for motivational messages and displays of art, all created by students.

“Medical and Dental school are very demanding and many of our peers suffer from sleep deprivation. Numerous studies show a direct relationship between academic performance/wellness and the amount of sleep we receive each night. Physical and mental health are intrinsically dependent on giving your body a proper rest,” says Gabriel Bouhadana. “We believe that having a protected area such as this one to escape from the sometimes stressful environment around us is crucial.”

“As well, it will allow students to express their creativity and share their positivity with their peers. Such areas are very rare at McGill and we believe that bringing this to our faculty will be a huge asset!” points out Adel Arezki.

The students hope to further develop the room by adding a wider array of peaceful decorations and chairs, and eventually provide sleeping masks, noise-cancelling headphones and more. They also aim to inspire other medical faculties across the country to follow in their footsteps, in the hopes of decreasing the burnout rate and mental health burden among medical students, which is unfortunately on the rise.

For more information about the WBNR or to extend your support, please feel free to email gabriel.bouhadana@mail.mcgill.ca

October 30, 2019

Source: McGill News

In the summer of 2017, Julia Coste, BA’19, got her period on board a packed airplane. It was early—she hadn’t packed any tampons or pads, and the plane wouldn’t be landing for another two hours. Panic settled in as the minutes ticked by. She was trapped.

Coste would eventually disembark and buy what she needed—problem solved—but the experience would nag at her for months. What if, instead of being stuck for just two hours without any products, she couldn’t afford to buy them at all?

For the hundreds of homeless women living on the streets of Montreal, getting their period poses a serious, recurring financial dilemma. An unacceptable one, if you ask Coste.

In November 2017, she and fellow arts student Chloé Pronovost-Morgan, BA’19, decided to tackle this problem head on. Together they co-founded Monthly Dignity, a bulk menstrual product delivery service to homeless shelters across the city.

Neither of them had any experience running a charity, and it was trial-by-fire at first. The two women set up a fundraising webpage, then started going around McGill making nerve-wracking speeches about menstrual bias to classrooms full of students. They held bake sales and set up donation boxes.

Within two weeks, they’d reached their fundraising goal. They purchased 7,000 products from a bulk distributor and stored them at home. “We would drive them to the shelters with whatever car we could find,” recalls Pronovost-Morgan. “Just ourselves, the two of us.”

Those days are long gone. Today, Monthly Dignity works in partnership with Fempro, one of the biggest manufacturers of hygiene products in Quebec. Every time the company changes its product packaging—which happens about once or twice a year—they donate the old products to Monthly Dignity.

Otherwise, those products would go straight to the landfill.

“The first delivery was to their home,” says Fempro’s general manager, Jean Fleury. The co-founders were storing upwards of 21,000 products in their houses, and it became clear pretty quickly that it just wasn’t sustainable. “Let’s say that, if there was any water leak in their house, there would be no issue!” Fleury jokes.

So Pronovost-Morgan and Coste (pictured left) reached out to Moisson Montréal, Canada’s largest food bank. Moisson has an enormous fleet of trucks at its disposal, and more storage space than the two students could ever pay for.

“Sometimes, problems have very simple solutions,” says Pronovost-Morgan, who’s currently studying medicine at McGill with a keen interest in public health policy. “It’s just a question of making the link between two entities that can contribute to that solution.”

By connecting the dots between Fempro and Moisson, Monthly Dignity has been able to provide over 60,000 hygiene products to their seven shelter partners.

And getting these items in bulk makes a huge difference for shelters, says Anastasia (BA’17), house manager at the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal.

“People are always willing to donate things,” she explains, “but it’s a lot more labor intensive to coordinate individuals coming to us with half a box of tampons.” Having a single source means all Anastasia has to do is make one phone call to Monthly Dignity every couple of months, if that.

Since launching two years ago, Monthly Dignity has been steadily gaining recognition for its work. Forces AVENIR, which recognizes the socially conscious efforts of students across Quebec, gave the group its top prize in the Mutual Aid, Peace, and Justice category this year. The group has also received a grant from Canada 150’s TakingItGlobal project.

For the co-founders, all of this positive attention serves a secondary purpose: eliminating the stigma around menstruation altogether.

“It’s not just about distributing products,” says Coste, “but about the dialogue, which is more long term. If we can have any kind of social impact, it would be really great to make menstruation less taboo.”

Coste is currently living in Paris, where she’s working to get Monthly Dignity’s first international branch off the ground. She takes my call from a crowded metro car, where the service isn’t great. She has to speak loudly and deliberately—over the chatter of nearby passengers—for me to hear everything she has to say about periods.

It’s a far cry from the embarrassment she felt on the airplane. “It’s always uncomfortable, but I’ve gotten used to it now,” she tells me. “It’s fun to watch people have the lightbulb moment when they realize that it’s a problem. It’s not just about periods anymore—the part that makes them awkward or confused. As soon as the poverty part comes in, they get it.”

November 28 2019

By CHASM Leadership

How can we do better as a community? 14 students, seven community members, and three faculty/alumni members convened to try to answer this question – and others – on November 20, 2019 at the inaugural, and bilingual, community campus exchange organized by the Community Health and Social Medicine Incubator (CHASM) and the McGill University Faculty of Medicine’s Social Accountability and Community Engagement (SACE) office. Together, participants and facilitators alike confronted difficult and complex issues to identify Montreal-specific health priorities, foster dialogue between the next generation of social entrepreneurs, inter-disciplinary health professionals, and non-profit groups. Also, importantly for CHASM, an organization founded and run by McGill medical and public health students, the event generated valuable insight that will help inform a list of community-led project topics for CHASM’s future Needs Assessment and Impact Stream.

Planning for this event, supported by a grant from the McGill Alumni Association and Taking IT Global, began in the summer. It started with a bilingual survey created in consultation with Dr. Leah Moss, Senior Advisor to the Vice-Principal (Health Affairs)/Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dr. Saleem Razack, Director of SACE.  The survey was circulated among students and members of the community at-large, including patient committees from major Montreal hospitals, nonprofit organizations and faculty. The results of this questionnaire formed the topics that were discussed at the evening of the exchange. They included healthcare access, poverty & unemployment, environmental health, Indigenous health, housing, racism, digital health, and care of the elderly.

The CHASM team recognizes the importance of representing different voices in the conversation.  “We believe that local leaders are experts about the issues within their neighbourhoods and have unique insight into potential solutions,” says Brianna Cheng, one of the CHASM directors. “It was important that we try to incorporate this local lens as much as possible throughout the planning process to make sure this was community-driven, inside and out.”

Dr. Razack orchestrated much of the evening’s “cafe du monde” or world cafe themed discussion, where attendees circulated among the eight topics throughout the night. He guided the attendees to discuss partnerships, barriers, and opportunities to addressing each of the community health priorities, and how the training of health professionals could be changed to address them. “As a Faculty, we very much need to understand the perspectives of community organizations serving persons from marginalized groups, as we work towards excellence in the education of future health professionals, and service to communities,” notes Dr. Razack. “This event was illuminating in this regard.”

While the inaugural event is now complete, the work only continues to evolve. In the months to come, CHASM and SACE plan to synthesize the results of the event using rigorous qualitative methods to produce strategic recommendations about how CHASM and McGill Faculty of Medicine can better advocate for community engagement on campus.

Photos: Christophe Caron

December 5 2019

Photo: Kacper Niburski

Launched by third-year McGill medical students Kacper Niburski and Laura Ran Yan, Sonoist uses real patients and ultrasound machines to provide medical students an opportunity to refine and enhance their ultrasound skills beyond the exposure they receive through their medical school curriculum.

Working with staff on the internal medicine wards at the McGill University Health Centre’s Glen site and the Jewish General Hospital to access ultrasound machines and patients, each Sonoist session accommodates up to four students working with four real patients that have a wide variety of ultrasound pathologies, such as pleural effusions, bladder distension and others.

Each two-hour session begins with a Sonoist team member teaching the proper technique, discussing findings and building a differential of pathologies. They then go to the patients’ rooms, and each student scans them, discusses their findings aloud, and talks about their clinical reasoning. The goal is to better the ultrasound technique of students not only by teaching them to scan in a more efficient and technically sound way, but also by allowing them to see the positive correlation to clinical application, achieved by employing scans where they see the point-of-care pathology they would be looking for regularly.

Bettering ultrasound skills for better patient care

Kacper and Laura began Sonoist because they felt that, while medical students practice a lot of technical ultrasound, their clinical acumen was often lacking. “Students were confused as to how to use ultrasound as a point-of-care measure,” explains Kacper. “They also were lacking the means to understand positives, working only on models without actual pathology. So, we wanted to make ultrasound more regular, more clinically-centered, and show that patients benefit from clinicians who are able to expand their physical exam and differential diagnosis with a readily available tool.”

Supported by the McGill Medical Students’ Society’s Special Project and Community Involvement Committee, Sonoist has so far been targeted at McGill medical students. There are plans to expand availability to residents and other healthcare practitioners in 2020, and, if all goes well, to other medical schools further down the line.

Kacper and Laura believe that improving the abilities and comfort level of students with respect to ultrasound will ultimately benefit patients. “Patient care can be made more efficient and whole by using available tools like ultrasound,” says Laura. “For example: rather than waiting for an x-ray, a clinician can use ultrasound to appropriately assess their patient’s pleural effusions. It is also important as it allows the patient, too, to visualize their pathology. This makes the patient a steward in their own health, and helps build the patient-doctor relationship. Sonoist is about creating the future of healthcare practitioners who can use all tools to better patient care.”

For more information: sonoist.com

December 16, 2019

New outreach project allows students to feel like doctors for a day

By Lisa Dutton

For years, Canadian medical schools have been working hard to ensure the next generation of doctors better reflects the diversity of the country’s population.  Numerous efforts are underway to recruit from traditionally underrepresented populations including Indigenous students, black students and students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The work is paying off, as the medical student bodies at McGill, and at other schools across the country, increasingly resemble the populations served. This diversity is excellent news for Canadians because health care providers from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences are better able to understand the needs, concerns and barriers to care experienced by some of their patients.

At McGill, two medical students, Sami Chergui and Antoine Denis, are doing their part to encourage students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to consider careers in health care. The second-year med students launched Academic Immersion in Medicine (AIM) to motivate high school students living in some of Montreal’s poorer neighbourhoods to consider careers in medicine, nursing, physical therapy, etc.

Sami and Antoine developed a roadshow for Secondary 3 to 5 students. It comprises interactive workshops and immersive simulations in an “emergency care setting.” So far, they and their small core of volunteers have presented to 200 students from three Montreal area high schools.  They teach the basics of suturing wounds and using an ultrasound machine. They also give a brief presentation about various health care careers and the possible academic paths to studying in these fields and take questions from students and teachers.

“The vast majority of students were extremely excited about the workshop because, as they said, they got to do ‘the stuff from Grey’s Anatomy.’ It is nice to see the friendly competition between students who try to surpass each other in speed and quality for their suturing,” says Sami. “Surprisingly, the ultrasound portion of the workshop is an even bigger hit than the suturing. The students really liked to see the organs they studied during their human biology classes.”

Antoine explains why the pair started the project, “We noticed that certain groups such as those with a lower SES or certain ethnic minorities are often underrepresented in medical programs. In addition, studies shows that students of low SES are more prone to ‘associate medical school with elitism and privilege and consider medical school to be unattainable for someone in their position (Richardson 2009). We feel that the lack of diversity within medical schools could eventually lead graduating doctors who may not be able to relate to specific patient populations. That is why we took it upon ourselves to try to encourage high school students from some of Montreal’s poorer neighbourhoods to consider a career in health.”

“Outreach efforts such as what Sami and Antoine have developed, are essential for reasons of equity within the Faculty of Medicine, but also for the future benefit of patients,” says Dr. Nicole Li-Jessen, Chair of the Widening Participation Committee of the Social Accountability and Community Engagement Office (SACE) at McGill.

Dr. Pascale Caidor, Diversity and Engagement Program Officer of SACE points out that several studies show that physicians from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to pursue primary care specialties and work with under-served populations. Also, physicians that are fully engaged in the community they serve can more easily identify key health priorities and commit to incorporating these issues into their educational and research projects.

Rapid growth and recruitment opportunities

The pair of entrepreneurial students have found more success than anticipated and consequently the demand for workshops is exceeding their team’s ability to deliver. To keep up and to offer more sessions in more schools, they are looking to recruit volunteers from all schools within the Faculty of Medicine.

“We are looking for around five long-term volunteers to help with the organizational aspects of the workshops. We are also looking for at least ten people to conduct the workshops. No matter the amount of time you can invest, your help is welcome,” says Sami.

If you are keen to help spark an interest in a health professions career, please contact Sami and Antoine at aim.mcgill.medicine@gmail.com

Find out more about the SACE Equity and Diversity Programs.

January 30 2020

By Maria Turner

“Your plans might be a straight line, but reality never is,” said Jaime Padros, co-founder and president of Bioauxilium Research Inc., a biotech company focused on the design, development, and manufacturing of cutting-edge research assay kits.

Padros was speaking to a room full of students and fellow industry leaders and entrepreneurs at the third annual Health Startup Day, held at McGill University on February 26, 2020. Along with the three other speakers of the evening — Mimi Galiana, co-founder and CSO of Saccade Analytics, Negin Ashouri, co-founder and CTO at FemTherapeutics, and Samir Mounir, director of Commercial Development in IT, Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Innovations at Caisse Desjardins du Réseau de la santé — Padros talked about the path from academia to entrepreneurship.

“If you wait to have everything in hand before you start, you will never start,” he said. “You have to take a risk.”

UNMET NEED

It was by students taking a risk that Health Startup Day first came about. Like all good startups, the idea grew out of an unmet need. Nevicia Case, a PhD candidate in psychiatry at McGill, was looking for information about careers outside of academia, but with little luck. She asked around and found she wasn’t the only graduate student who was frustrated with the lack of specific resources, so she and a couple of fellow students decided to take matters into their own hands.

The group initially decided to create an event that would inform graduate students about available opportunities, teach them some of the skills needed to crossover into industry, and, perhaps, inspire them towards entrepreneurship.

The first event was held in 2018 and was a huge success. By the second year, Case — along with other students who had come together to help her — decided to establish themselves as an organization, the Health Innovation Initiative (HI2). The goal of the initiative is to “create opportunities for post-secondary students and researchers in the health and life sciences to explore entrepreneurship and applications of their expertise and skills beyond academia.”

“All these people who are in health and life sciences want to learn more about entrepreneurship, they want to know about alternative career paths, they want to know that their research skills matter outside of academia,” said Caitlin MacEachen, MSc ’19, cofounder and copresident of HI2.

The initiative has already moved beyond a student-only organization and a single event. “After trying to fit everything into a four-hour time slot last year, we decided to spread out the events throughout the year,” explained Case. This year, HI2 has already collaborated with Montreal NewTech to organize a Creative Collisions DemoNight on artificial intelligence and life sciences. They are currently planning other events including a panel discussion and a case competition to be held later in 2020.

CREATING NETWORKS

This year’s Health Startup Day focused on networking, something that the founders of HI2 have already shown they are good at by teaming up with the Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives multidisciplinary initiative at McGill and the event design agency Imagine Ideation to organize the event. They also got sponsorship, this year from Caisse Desjardins du Réseau de la santé.

Students from diverse fields attended the event. Saba Aslani, who is pursuing her master’s in neuroscience at McGill, was there to explore her options after graduation. Kristen Vanderwee, a student in philosophy who also works as a research assistant at the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill, said she came to the event to network and to learn more about Negin Ashouri’s FemTherapeutics project. “I’m really interested in the ethics of artificial intelligence,” she said.

Another attendee was Naghmeh Ansari, a computer science student at Concordia University and a surgical innovation fellow at McGill University, who is already working with others to launch a health startup. “I came to network and to get ideas from different startups, what paths they took and what they learned,” she said.

The event organizers brought together representatives from various areas of health innovation. “There are researchers here from academia, entrepreneurs, people from accelerators and finance, people from all over,” said Saima Ahmed, a PhD candidate in experimental medicine at McGill who is also a co-founder of HI2. “And as you can see, people are connecting and talking. That is what we wanted.”

“It’s one thing to bring people from different disciplines and industries into a room, and another to foster meaningful, relevant connections that last beyond the event,” added Amanda Chalupa, a PhD candidate in cultural psychiatry at McGill, and an associate at Imagine Ideation. “People’s time is limited, so we wanted to make sure that this event brought value to all involved. HI2 is on the right track toward becoming a meaningful community player — a necessary bridge even — for the academic and entrepreneurship communities.”

A sure sign of success? One company, albeit a nonprofit one, has already grown out of Health Startup Day: Case, MacEachen, and Ahmed plan to apply for official nonprofit status later this month.

March 11 2020

Volunteer medical student-led initiative aims to help Faculty members adapt to delivering  health care and instruction remotely

“It started off with showing a physician how to recover accidentally deleted texts by pressing “Command + Z”,” says Danny Kim, a second-year medical student at McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine of the initiative he launched to help health care professionals needing to abruptly adapt to using digital technology for their work.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) quickly shifted to telehealth as a means of delivering health care in a timely manner. The changes include accessing hospital charts remotely from home, setting up video platforms such as Zoom, and collecting necessary medical data digitally. Due to the sudden changes, several clinicians found themselves lost in navigating these systems. Simultaneously, all clinical teaching at McGill Medicine was effectively shut down. The students, with more time on their hands, were looking for ways to help support the frontline health care workers. Helping clinicians having difficulty with technology proved to be a perfect opportunity, while respecting social distancing.

“I was never really a big technology person, at least relative to others in my generation,” explains Danny. “However, growing up in a digital world, some of the functions and skillsets my generation takes for granted proved to be very novel to other generations.”

What started as a one-person job, has now expanded into the McGill Medicine Telehealth group, in response to the growing needs caused by the pandemic. Since it’s inception, the group has helped more than 20 health care professionals in all matters of technology. Faculty members send requests to the group by e-mail and are then connected to a medical student volunteer via phone or Zoom. If a solution is not easily found, the team discusses and finds a solution together to reply back to the Faculty member. The McGill Medicine Telehealth team works closely in conjunction with the MUHC and the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) Telehealth IT departments. Both hospitals have now asked the McGill Medicine Telehealth team to expand technical supports to patients. Additionally, with many other great student initiatives, such as the COVID-19 Student Support Initiative, the team has been collaborating to refer requests to one another.

“In these unprecedented times to adapt hospital capacity, limit community spread, preserve our workforce and maintain ongoing care to our patients, we need to rapidly adapt to working virtually,” says Dr. Michael Shevell, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine. “We are fortunate to live in an era where technology enables this, however many of those who remember the curled paper coming out of a fax machine with wonder have been reluctant to take that first step and adopt technological advances. Boomers have to become Zoomers and this initiative enables this in a friendly  constructive way across generations.”

Jeremy Levett, a first-year McGill medical student, has been the at the forefront of expanding the initiative to the JGH. With each hospital, the needs are different, and the team adapts. Moreover, there has been growing interest in continuing telehealth beyond COVID-19. To assess telehealth satisfaction and feasibility for post-pandemic use, Noha Elsherbini, a second-year McGill medical student, has initiated a MUHC quality improvement project to survey the hospital staff.

“We are thankful to the MUHC for providing us with a Zoom Telehealth Pro license to better help our clinicians and patients,” says Danny. “We also welcome and accept requests from instructors across the Faculty of Medicine’s schools who may be in need of support as they adapt to the realities of remote teaching.”

To reach out to the group, or request support, write to: telehealth.mcgillmed@gmail.com

April 3, 2020

Initiative unites students from across departments and universities eager to help

Clockwise from bottom left, first-year McGill medical students Laura Pinkham, Anne Xuan-Lan Nguyen, Zoe O’Neill and PhD student Adamo Donovan discussing their initiative over Zoom.

“Given that McGill was closed for the first week when we returned from March break, we actually had the time to reflect on how the coronavirus was affecting different individuals and how we could do something to help,” says first-year McGill University medical student Laura Pinkham. Inspired by an initiative started by students at the Schulich School of Medicine at Western University, an idea coalesced quickly. “Our group came together fairly organically and before we knew it, we were having Zoom meetings to iron out the details of what we thought would work here in Montreal,” explains Zoe O’Neill, also a first-year medical student at McGill.

These discussions spawned the COVID Student Support Initiative, launched on March 24 led by Laura, Zoe, fellow first-year medical student Anne Xuan-Lan Nguyen, and PhD student Adamo Donovan. The plan was to recruit student volunteers from health-related disciplines across Montreal’s universities and to pair them with frontline health care professionals in need of help taking care of everyday tasks such as child and pet care, grocery and pharmacy runs or other general errands. The response from the student community has been impressive, with more than 70 students representing five Montreal universities having already volunteered, including 27 from McGill’s School of Medicine, Dentistry, the Ingram School of Nursing, the School of Physical & Occupational Therapy, the School of Human Nutrition, and the School of Social Work. To date, the student volunteers have been matched with 30 health care professionals who requested support, and seven additional pairings await confirmation.

Of particular importance to the group is ensuring that these tasks are undertaken while respecting public health directives on social distancing. The students pair only one volunteer per health care professional (or family) and provide them with a continuously evolving set of guidelines and memorandum of understanding, which addresses this directly, stressing that if any volunteer experiences symptoms they must contact the team and their match immediately.

Plans to extend their support to other groups in need

Given the tremendous response from the student community – there remain 40 unmatched volunteers, as well as numerous students from other disciplines who have expressed an interest in helping – the group is considering ways they can expand the scope of their work to provide sustainable support to other vulnerable populations in Montreal, such as the homeless.

“One important initiative is addressing the current shortage of food and support for the Montreal homeless community during the COVID-19 pandemic,” explains Anne. “We are currently applying for funds, through COVID-19 Community Care initiative grants, that would allow us to expand the project  and allow student volunteers to buy food for shelters, as well as encourage them to provide their services to address the volunteer shortage these shelters are experiencing. We have created a platform that can be easily adapted to incorporate other initiatives and serve more people in Montreal.”

Positive response from the community 

With students back in class, it is important for them to be able to ensure they don’t fall behind in their studies. The group makes it clear that student volunteers are in many cases juggling a number of commitments, with their health and school being priorities. “We haven’t received any complaints and the health care professionals really appreciate students going out of their way to support them,” notes Adamo.

In fact, the response from the health care professionals has been positive. “We are getting messages in the request form itself expressing gratitude for the initiative,” shares Zoe. “Additionally, we have received very encouraging emails from health care professionals who are helping to disseminate the form.” Adds Laura, “The positive feedback from both professionals and students makes the work we do absolutely worth it.”

In addition to thanking the health care professionals for all of the work they are doing to fight the pandemic, Adamo notes that the group is also thankful for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Bridge Program (www.icubridgeprogram.org) for their backend support in creating the form and database used for the initiative.

“We would also like to thank all the student volunteers who are contributing to the COVID Student Support Initiative,” says Anne. “Without your time and dedication, supporting our frontline health professionals would not have been possible.”

Both health care professionals who can use some extra support as well as any students interested in volunteering for the initiative, can do so by completing the form available here.

April 3, 2020

A group of third-year Medicine students have teamed up with local restaurants to deliver food to healthcare workers during COVID-19

Happy respiratory therapists at the Jewish General Hospital prepare to dig into the delicious fare provided by Falafel St. Jacques

Source: McGill Reporter

At the beginning of March, Jordana Serero, Olivier Del Corpo, Melissa Vitagliano were typical third-year medical students doing their clinical rotations at local hospitals.

Two weeks later, however, those rotations came to an abrupt end, as the province began locking down to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. But that didn’t stop their desire to pitch in any way they could.

“We were on FaceTime about a week after our clinical rotations had ended and we started talking about our colleagues who were on the frontlines fighting the pandemic,” says Serero, who wants to work in internal medicine when she graduates. “These are people we were just working with. So, we asked ourselves, how can we support them through this very scary time?”

“Our way of saying ‘thank you’”

Reaching out to their colleagues, they found that people needed food – specifically prepared meals.

“Because it’s so hectic and chaotic in the hospitals right now, a lot of people just don’t have time to make themselves something to eat. By the time they get home they are so exhausted they don’t even think about cooking,” says Serero.

The trio decided to deliver fresh meals to hospital workers; healthcare professionals, custodians, administrative staff – “anyone who is exposed and working on the frontlines,” she says. “It is our way of saying ‘thank you.’”

With that, MerciMeals MTL was born.

Supporting healthcare workers, local restaurants

Enlisting the help of classmates Anthony Thorburn, Vincent Palmieri, Kaylie Schachter, Alexa Del Corpo, set up a GoFundMe page and began approaching local restaurants. The twist is that restaurants were not asked to donate meals. Instead the MerciMeals MTL team insisted on buying them.

“The reason why we want to raise funds is to be able to purchase meals,” says Serero. “Restaurants have lost an incredible amount of business, so we didn’t want to ask for donations. We want to support healthcare workers while supporting our neighbourhood restaurants as well.”

Sereno says restaurant owners have been “incredibly generous,” adjusting their prices so that MerciMeal MTL get more bang for each buck raised. In all, some 10-12 restaurants are participating in the initiative.

Medical students delivering meals safely

Each day, the team delivers fresh meals to local hospitals workers at either Saint Mary’s, the Jewish General, the Royal Victoria, the Montreal General, or a local CLSC. They are hoping to expand the deliveries to pharmacies next. “We delivering the meals ourselves,” says Serero. “We’re medical students so we want to make sure that the transfer of this food was done in the safest way possible.”

“A lot of people have told us that a simple, good meal helps get them through the day – and it really shows on the faces of the people when we deliver the meals,” she says. “They really appreciate it.”

Community steps up

The Merci Meal MTL GoFundMe page reached its goal of $20,000 within its first three days, and is still going strong. Sereno says the plan is to keep the deliveries coming, as long as the funds are there. In fact, the team is hoping to expand operations in response to requests from healthcare teams around the city.

Serero says the team never expected such a quick and enthusiastic response to the initiative. “I think it illustrates how in times of incredible distress communities come together to support each other.”

To donate to the MerciMeals MTL initiative, visit the team’s GoFundMe page. People looking to help, including drivers, can email mercimealsmtl@gmail.com

April 7 2020

McGill-led initiative delivers updates daily into medical professionals’ inboxes

As the novel coronavirus outbreak swept rapidly across nations, evolving quickly into a global pandemic, researchers around the world quickly mobilized efforts to gain a better understanding of SARS-CoV2 and to work towards finding effective treatment and vaccine. With the unprecedented once-in-a-generation changes to societal behaviours, for example through social distancing and complete lockdowns, the day-to-day normalcy of the world was turned on its head. For medical students, these changes meant an abrupt temporary halt to their clinical rotations.

Provided with unanticipated time at home, fourth-year McGill medical student Ariane Litalien was looking for a way to contribute to helping the frontline healthcare professionals and researchers working around the clock to rein in the virus. “”Recognizing that it would be time consuming for those working on the coronavirus to follow emerging COVID-19 literature on a daily basis, we created the “COVID-19 Update,” a daily e-newsletter, featuring curated and concise summaries of new scientific articles about COVID-19,” says Ariane.

The group, which launched the first edition of the update on March 14, is comprised of 18 medical students representing seven Faculties of Medicine across Canada, including eight from McGill. Using skills they have honed during their time studying medicine and conducting research, each day the students run a PubMed search for keywords relevant to COVID-19, as well as manually reviewing open collections from the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Readers are also encouraged to submit articles they would like to see included in future editions.

The group’s editorial board, which includes Ariane and Catherine Roy from McGill, Emily Lostchuck from the University of British Columbia and Leo Kadota from the University of Ottawa, discuss the relevance of each selected article, striving to include recent information that is most relevant to frontline healthcare professionals and may impact their practice.

“Our intent is not to guide clinical care, nor to provide medical advice, but to summarize the state of the literature and to alert health professionals to some articles that may be relevant to their individual context,” explains Catherine.

The students are grateful for the guidance they have received from two faculty advisors, Dr. Anna MacDonald and Dr. Shixin Shen, as well as from medical journalist Kate Johnson, who generously donate their time and expertise on a daily basis. They are hoping to build an online platform that readers could use in order to search previously included articles for reference.

In the meantime, the positive feedback they receive from some of the more than 6,000 subscribers they have amassed, confirms to the team that their efforts are being well received and keeps them motivated to continue churning out updates.

“Your authors are to be congratulated,” wrote McGill Medicine graduate Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, who is currently Departmental Science Advisor at Health Canada. “The summaries are rigorous, clear and relevant.”

Adds Dr. Don Sheppard, Director of the McGill Initiative in Infection and Immunity, “The COVID-19 update is truly well done. It’s the first thing I read every day.”

Click here to subscribe to the COVID-19 update.

April 9, 2020

Find out how you can help!

Illustration by Sabrina Lasry-Shemie

By: McGill Medical Students Aliya Szpindel, Laurel Walfish & Sabrina Lasry-Shemie

In just over two weeks, Donnez La Protection /Give Protection has collected thousands of pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) from over 260 individuals and local businesses for distribution to Quebec hospitals and clinics. Donations collected by the initiative have already been delivered to a number of institutions including the Jewish General Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital, Lakeshore General Hospital and Lasalle Hospital. Donated PPE has also been sent to health centres in northern Quebec, including Centre de santé Inuulitsivik – Puvirnituq and The Mistissini Clinic.

The campaign was started by a group of community members, including physicians, dentists, residents, medical students and other healthcare professionals, who wanted to help avoid Quebec facing PPE shortages that have been an unfortunate reality for many frontline healthcare workers in Ontario, the United States, and Italy.

The concern regarding the lack of supplies in hospitals and clinics has been expressed by healthcare professionals at the frontlines of this pandemic, who risk exposing themselves without the proper protective equipment. Dr Marty Teltscher, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and an Infectious Disease specialist at the Jewish General Hospital, urges citizens to please leave medical-grade protective equipment for healthcare workers. He emphasizes, “You do not need an N95 mask unless you are a healthcare worker attending to a critically ill patient or performing one of many aerosol generating medical procedures (AGMP).” Local offices and citizens are therefore being asked to donate any available supplies in order to protect both our frontline healthcare workers and their patients during this pandemic.

The DonnezLaProtection.com website is set up to receive requests from healthcare facilities or medical professionals who are in need of supplies. All information disclosed remains confidential, but each healthcare institution is added to an online map to track location of need in the province. Currently, over 60 clinics and hospitals are listed and volunteers from the initiative are working daily to collect and deliver supplies in order to meet urgent needs.

Volunteer and McGill medical student Clare Fogarty delivering PPE to Maison de soins palliatifs St-Raphael

“The current situation with COVID-19 has caused a lot of stress for many, but it has also evoked a call for unity and creativity among people all over Quebec,” says Natanel Sebbag, a 3^rd year McGill medical student who has been volunteering his time away from the hospital with Donnez La Protection to collect donations from the community. “With Donnez La Protection we’re seeing individuals as well as businesses from all over the Montreal region donating PPE in this time where they are most needed. It’s been great to see so many people coming together to help healthcare workers, and I am very grateful to be a part of one of these initiatives.”

Donnez La Protection has a plea for all individuals and local businesses, including dental offices, veterinary clinics, laboratories, closed healthcare clinics, construction companies, plumbers, electricians, tattoo studios, nail salons or anyone who may own protective equipment: please donate your personal gear! Donations, including surgical or N95 masks, gloves, goggles and gowns can be registered at donnezlaprotection.com. A representative from the initiative will contact you in short order and make arrangements to pick up your generous donations and promptly distribute them to healthcare professionals in need, all while respecting social distancing directives.

Don’t have any personal protective equipment to donate but still want to help? Volunteers are a vital resource for proper collection and distribution. You can help by participating in contactless delivery of supplies, or by contacting local businesses through a cold calling and email list to solicit donations.

For more information regarding Donnez La Protection, please visit the website at: www.donnezlaprotection.com

For volunteering information, join the volunteer Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/donnezlaprotectionvolunteers/