QBOL was at the FMF 2011, Montreal

We had a great time at the Family Medicine Forum held in Montreal this week. Excellent teaching sessions and the chance to meet and learn from many of the great Family Medicine teachers across Canada. Almost 4,000 people to rub elbows with over four days!

Félicitations to the CFPC and to Montreal for organizing this event.

Help Wanted!

This post is just an FYI that we are now looking to hire an organized, enthusiastic person as our QBOL Site Assistant.  This is a full time position supporting our QBOL site locally with an office in the new LHEARN Centre at Lakeridge Health Oshawa.  Joining our team at this time will give the successful candidate time to participate in some of our preparations, assist in recruiting our first batch of residents, and to become acclimated to the people, places, and processes that will be part of QBOL.

If you or somebody you know is interested, you can find more information through the Queen's University Human Resources page at www.hr.queensu.ca, click on "Job Opportunities" and then proceed to find our listing under "Available Positions: External Candidates".  Also pay attention to the link on "How to Apply".


(If you are having difficulty, please follow this link which will take you to the actual posting which outlines the candidate requirements and job responsibilities although you will still need to go through the instructions outlined from the Human Resources website to apply.)

Accredited*

So it was a lot of effort but it was worth it!

The accreditation team gave a very positive report for Queen's Department of Family Medicine (as well as most of the specialty programs) after spending much of last week visiting the various teaching sites and meeting with the teachers and learners.  I will provide a link to Dean Reznik's blog which goes into more detail about the feedback that was given.

A big congratulations to everybody on this success!

* - the asterisk indicates that, while the accreditation team gave a glowing review of most of the programs including Family Medicine, the official (and final) decision is not announced until early in the new year.

Article: Hands-on 'LHEARNing'

Just trying something different today. Below should be a link that will take you to an online version of the print story that ran in the local paper regarding the grand opening of the LHEARN Centre last month. I hope to get some pictures of the LHEARN Centre up on the blog later this week.

DurhamRegion Article: Hands-on 'LHEARNing' at Lakeridge Health Oshawa

CaRMS is in the air!

So our QBOL site committee has been busy preparing our CaRMS submission for the upcoming cohort of graduating medical students.  If it hasn't already been posted, you should be able to see what we came up with on the CaRMS web site shortly.

If you cannot wait to see what we've been up to, I have updated the pages of this blog to reflect how our curriculum is shaping up.  You will find them categorized according to their Domain of Clinical Care (DOCC - previously called CRAGs) along the left here.

Below that, you will find a variety of links; the majority are offered to help you familiarize yourself with the area.

We are looking forward to this week's LHEARN grand opening (maybe I'll try to take and post some photos this Wednesday!) immediately followed by a Queen's DFM Faculty Development session.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or wish to join us for any of our events.

QBOL - Let's get it started!

We've been focusing our efforts recently to produce our QBOL blurb for the CaRMS website and we also hope to develop our other promotional materials soon.

I hope we will have good representation from the QBOL Site Committee at the upcoming 2011 Family Medicine Forum in Montreal this November 3rd to 5th (educator's day on November 2nd) so that we can start our "sales pitch" and generate interest in what we are developing.  Hope to see you there!

In addition, the LHEARN Centre at Lakeridge Health Oshawa which houses our new classroom facilities, administrative space, resident lounge, sim lab, and library will be showcased in a grand opening ceremony on September 14th at 2 pm.  That evening, Queen's Department of Family Medicine will also be hosting a faculty development session.  Please let us know if you need further information about this session.

I can't tell you how excited we are to finally be progressing from the planning phase of our program development as we get ready to meet with some future QBOL residents.

Working away.

This post is specifically for the QBOL PGES.  Thanks for the great meeting this past Thursday.  I just wanted to provide ongoing links to the two documents we discussed at our last meeting where we are working on our CaRMS promotional materials.  One document is regarding things a potential resident would want to know about our curriculum and the other deals with our communities (click on the word to go to the appropriate document).

The first draft is due by the end of next week and the "drop dead" date is actually (gasp!) September 2nd for CaRMS material.  The brochures will need to be done soon afterwards.

To everybody else, our work continues behind the scenes.  I will be updating the pages on the blog to reflect the curriculum that we have designed / are trying to deliver starting July 1st, 2012.  Less than a year to go!