Weekend Review: Garneau Theatre, an OSCE, and Board Game Night

This week has felt long; but not in a bad way, just filled with lots of things. I headed into work a couple of times this long weekend, to round on the inpatients and catch up on some work; but still got a full day off to relax/run errands/visit with friends. It's been a good mix of fun and productivity. Here are some things I've appreciated this week:

1. Garneau Theatre -- I finally got around to visiting this historic theatre, for one of their Science in the Cinema screenings. It was a cancer-related film (Living Proof) followed by a Q&A with several physicians. The film portrayed (slightly cheesily) the development of the drug Herceptin, an interesting story.

   

   also interesting was the old theatre

   

   I love that it hasn't really changed since the 1940s (source)
2. oncology nurse navigators -- We had an interesting grand rounds this week on the cancer nurse navigator program, which is something really great that I wasn't aware existed. With Edmonton being the main cancer centre for northern Alberta (and the Territories), we see a lot of patients from smaller cities, where there is often not a lot of oncology-specific support available. To better support these patients, cancer nurse navigators have been stationed at peripheral cancer centres around the province -- they get in touch with the patients from the surrounding small towns and help with anything from transportation to education to medications. I think it's a super initiative!

   

   and it was one of those rare grand rounds where we get free lunch -- also appreciated!

3. OSCE -- I spent a morning this week helping to invigilate a med student clinical exam -- and even learned a few things about the cranial nerve exam (turns out that watching something 30 times is a pretty good study technique).

   

   good times

4. Billiard Club -- I had a nice Friday evening catching up with friends over dinner and drinks; the coolest thing about this pub being that you can look up into old clock tower of the historic Old Strathcona Post Office and check out the working pulley/gear mechanism in a glass case on the floor.

   

   look up, waaay up (...)

5. wellness committee -- I attended my first meeting of the post-graduate medical education wellness committee, headed up by an enthusiastic ER doctor. The resident reps discussed some great ideas and I'm looking forward to working with them over the next year.
6. study accrual -- We hit our next milestone in patient accrual to our oncology study this week (that's actually the most exciting thing on this list for me!). I assembled berry/brownie skewers to celebrate.
7. Puerto Rico -- Yesterday I headed over to a friend's place for chili and board games. We played Puerto Rico, which was good fun, albeit a steep learning curve for the half of us who'd never played (or heard of) it.

   

   How do people even come up with this stuff? (source)