Second Canadian EM Residents' Workshop: review

Resident Issues

CJEM 2002;4(1):55-56

The 2nd Canadian EM Residents' Workshop took place in beautiful Calgary prior to the CAEP 2001 conference and was a huge success. It was opened with a cocktail and dinner reception for workshop participants and many of the leading EM teachers from around the country. Following dinner, the CAEP EM Resident Leadership and the CAEP EM Teacher of the Year Awards were presented to Dr. Sunil Sookram (Edmonton) and Dr. John Ross (Halifax), respectively. Dr. Bill Sevcik, then entertained us with an informative talk about the "Future of Emergency Medicine."

The following morning, participants were treated to two stellar lectures. Dr. Janet Nuth (Ottawa) taught the 10 key elements of "How to be a great EM teacher," and Dr. Bill Sevcik (Edmonton) discussed "Career Planning: What You Need to Know to Get a Job."

After a light lunch, we sat down as a resident group to plan our future contributions to Emergency Medicine. First up were the elections of the new executive. Jason Frank stepped down as President, and Kathryn Irwin filled this position. Five executive members were elected: Omar Ahmad, Jennifer Carpenter, Sara Gray, Shona MacLachlan, and Yana Simice. Jonathan Davidow and Jennifer Carpenter agreed to serve as coeditors of the CJEM Resident Issues section, and Ken Lam and Adam Lund agreed to represent us on the CAEP.ca Web site Committee.

The afternoon brainstorming workshops tackled resident-related issues such as EM staffing, the need for enhanced communication between Canadian EM programs and the potential need for ultrasound training for residents. We also discussed how to improve the conference for next year, and you'll see that some of our ideas, like the job fair, are being implemented this year. There were also productive development meetings for the resident chapters of CAEP.ca and CJEM.