Weekend Review: Canada Geese, Candy Bribes, & OSCE Invigilation

I missed this last week :( Will try to do better with posting consistently. Since I'm on home call this week, I haven't been doing any in-house call which honestly has been a big relief (I know, I just wrote a whole post about its merits...but I think I needed to catch up on sleep, which I did). Here are some things I've appreciated in the past seven days:

1. foliage -- The seasons seem to switch so quickly here; this was that pivotal week when one day the trees are bare and the next they've sprouted leaves. Funnily enough, the elms one street over are a little ways behind.

   

   by that curb is the first (and only) flower I've sighted this year (just one more thing I didn't properly appreciate about Victoria)

2. geese -- With the warm weather have come the geese. Great big Canada geese. They've been hanging out everywhere and don't seem to mind humans one bit. This one refused to move despite cars driving past it; I thought it was cute, until it did some rather aggressive hissing.

   

   goose turf

3. journal club -- Every so often the residents are invited to dinner presentations, an upside of which is getting to try out nice restaurants. This week's talk was at the Glass Monkey Gastropub, which turned out to be a really nice place, despite its nondescript strip-mall facade. I had a prawn lentil salad, butternut squash soup, salmon, and berry crisp; it was all beautiful and delicious (but alas, too awkward to photograph).

   

   we had the whole little restaurant to ourselves and the staff were so lovely (source)

4. study milestone -- This year I've had the opportunity to be involved in setting up a clinical study. So far it's taught me that even the simplest of studies is a whole lot more work than you'd expect...but totally worth it once you start seeing the data roll in. It's been really exciting to watch things progress and last week we met our first milestone -- 25 of 200 subjects accrued! Every 25 I'm going to get the clinic staff some kind of treat. I used this first one as an excuse to go to Bulk Barn and buy all the candy (and eat a fair bit of it).

   

   keeping track (orange = treat!)

   

   throwback to working in a movie theatre; I don't think I'd eaten marshmallow bananas and strawberries since then
   ...man, forgot how much I love them
5. OSCE -- I got to invigilate a first-year med OSCE this week, which was interesting to experience from the other side. An OSCE is a practical exam where actors pretend to be patients. Honestly, I hate OSCEs...and invigilating them isn't much better. For one, I felt anxious for the students (although I didn't need to be; they all did amazing). The bigger problem was that after about the 10th student, it got pretty boring. And all I had to do was sit in the corner -- I can only imagine how hard it must be to play a patient.
6. an apple a day -- I love this:

   

   funny enough to excuse the grammar flub (source)