March 20: The Return of our Annual Festival of Medical Storytelling

The Doctors’ Lounge  Festival of Medical Storytelling returns March 20.

It is an evening dedicated to sharing stories, poems, songs and artwork about your experiences as a physician within the health-care system, whether as a provider or as a recipient of medical care.

Presenters are asked to keep their contributions to less than 5 minutes (we welcome creative efforts in pieces of one minute or less. In the past, some of these shorter presentations have been quite moving. It is amazing what can be conveyed in a few words! ).

Even if you are not prepared to be a presenter, feedback from audience members will hopefully make this a fully interactive experience. Dr. Rex Kay of Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, The Arts and Humanities will be on hand to give insightful feedback on the creative efforts presented. Ars Medica is an award-winning Toronto-based literary journal which explores illness, healing, perceptions of the body, and encounters with health-care.

To kick off the evening, we will be hearing from our President, Dr. Rose Zacharias, who will be sharing her love for medical narrative based on her own personal experiences as well as the stories shared with her by colleagues as President of the OMA. Dr. Zacharias is a certificant of the Harvard Media and Medicine Program.

Let’s celebrate World Storytelling Day as was our tradition prior to the pandemic (well, almost: this event will take place virtually, but it opens up the possibility of hearing from our colleagues who will be able to participate from outside of Toronto).

Time to let the creative juices flow just in time for spring.

Interested in more training in narrative medicine? See: https://narrativebasedmedicine.ca/foundation/

Feb 28: An Evening with Dr. Geoffrey Cohen

 OMA membership means that you are part of a unique group that makes up about 0.2% of Ontario’s population.

However, being a member of an organization does not necessarily mean that you feel a sense of belonging to that group.

What does it take to make that transformation?

Evidence is mounting that a sense of belonging can be as important for maintaining health as diet, exercise and sleep.

Many of our patients  manifest their lack of  a sense of belonging with physical and mental health complaints. Is there anything you as a clinician can do to address the root source of their problems?

You are invited to contemplate these questions by spending an evening exploring the science of belonging with Dr. Geoffrey L. Cohen, author of Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides .

Please join us to enjoy the feeling of belonging with colleagues at our next Doctors’ Lounge event.

RE: The sense of belonging for Torontonians, see page 52: https://www.environicsinstitute.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/tf---scs2022---final---digital-final-ua52844d4113104e2899d928c42c4c367f.pdf?sfvrsn=69940316_0

The impact of COVID on belonging and its health implications https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/sipr.12086

January 25: An Evening with Elizabeth Svoboda

As we enter 2023, operating within a system that is collapsing all around us, you may be asking yourself, how can I go on helping others ?

To gain perspective, a bigger question might be, what motivates you to help others? What happens when one’s identity transforms into that of “ the helper?”

You are invited to spend an hour with Elizabeth Svoboda, author of What Makes a Hero: The Surprising Science of Selflessness to explore the subject matter of her book.

In the second hour, her recent article in Scientific American on moral injury will serve as the starting point for a discussion, as we share thoughts about moral injury, an emerging phenomenon that you will be hearing more about in the coming years.

You and members of your support system are invited to join your colleagues on Bell’s Let’s Talk Day to do just that: talk, and just as importantly, listen.