March 31: The Narrative Imperative

 When does one become a doctor? Sure, graduation confirms it, but there are particular moments that lead to that time in “professional identity transformation” when one can finally say with confidence: “I am a doctor.” As spring arrives, in keeping with the season, you are invited to share your experiences of morphing from student caterpillar to physician butterfly with your colleagues during our annual Doctors’ Lounge Medical Storytelling Festival.

The evening will begin with presentations by Dr. Peter Newmanand Dr.  Marshall Korenblum.

Peter will be launching his new book, In Harm’s Way: A Doctor Let Loose in the World.

Marshall will be reflecting on being a physician for over half a century, many of those years spent as Psychiatrist-in-Chief at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre for Children. He will also be musing on the future based on the past.

After their presentations, the remainder of the evening is dedicated to sharing your stories about the process that you went through in identifying with our profession (or possibly when your identity was shaken). Does retirement change one’s identity? Join us and find out if you are destined to be a physician for life!

Presenters are asked to keep their contributions to less than 5 minutes (we welcome creative 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 that explores illness, healing, perceptions of the body, and encounters with healthcare.

Image courtesy of Grok

FEBRUARY : TBD

 

January 20: An Evening with Dr. Amardeep Singh Mangat

 The new year is traditionally a time associated with making healthier choices.

So why can those choices be so hard to make, given that the outcome may be a potentially better quality and quantity of life?

Please choose to join us as we begin the 22^nd year of the Doctors’ Lounge series with an exploration of the epidemic of chronic illnesses that can be managed or even reversed with guidance from experts in “lifestyle medicine.”

Our guide for the evening is general internist Dr. Amardeep Singh Mangat, who is on staff at North York General Hospital. Dr. Mangat is the medical director of the Aroga Lifestyle Medical Clinic in Ontario. He is a lecturer at the University of Toronto and serves on the clinical faculty and Dean’s Council at Toronto Metropolitan University School of Medicine.

Image courtesy of Grok

December 8: An Evening with Dr. Brennan Spiegel

You are invited to join us for the closing program of the 21^st year of the Doctors’ Lounge series as Dr. Brennan Spiegel, MD, professor of Medicine and Public Health at Cedars-Sinai and UCLA, will provide us with an overview of his new book, PULL: How Gravity Shapes Your Body, Steadies the Mind, and Guides Our Health, Dr. Spiegel will explore how this invisible force influences everything from our brains to our bowels (he is a gastroenterologist with a special interest in IBS). He will introduce us to his vision for a new field he calls biogravitational medicine—and will show us how, by understanding how to build “gravity resilience,”  we can benefit both ourselves and our patients.

Dr. Spiegel is also a pioneer in artificial intelligence and virtual reality. He is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed papers and 8 medical textbooks. His work spans medicine, behavioral science, and emerging technology.

Please join us as we enter the holiday season with an examination of our place as humans under the influence of gravity, looking at life from Dr. Spiegel’s unique perspective.

November 11: An Evening with Dr. Carl Elliot

Truth.

Justice.

The Medical Way.

Sometimes the medical way is to do injustice to the truth and its bearers.

When unwelcome truths are revealed, the person doing the exposing can be treated unfairly by both the secret keepers and those expected to be grateful for the light shed, creating a unique form of moral injury.

You are invited to spend an evening with Dr. Carl Elliott as we explore his experience and that of other medical whistleblowers, as described in his book The Occasional Human Sacrifice.

Please join us this Remembrance Day as we honour the memory of those who made personal sacrifices for our freedom, and explore the motivation of those who are driven by serving the value of the greater good despite the costs.

Monday September 29: An Evening with Drs. Ivan Oransky & Adam Cifu

September is traditionally back to school time.

For physicians, school never ends.

Much of that ongoing education is based on the medical literature, and recent times have demonstrated some shakiness in that foundation.

You are invited to spend an evening reflecting on the quality of the current medical literature with Dr. Ivan Oransky and Dr. Adam Cifu.

Dr. Oransky is the director of the Center for Scientific Integrity, which recently received a $900K grant to establish the Medical Evidence Project that will be using the tools of forensic metascience to test the integrity of the medical literature.

Dr. Cifu's latest venture is the Sensible Medicine project (Substack and podcast), and he will be sharing with us his passion for evidence based medicine, exploring the movement’s present strengths and weaknesses.

Please join us for an evening examining the quality control challenges that we all face in our quest to stay current as medical practitioners.

Date: Monday, September 29

Time: 7.30 PM Dr. Oransky’s presentation

           8:30 PM Dr. Cifu’s presentation

(please note, these sessions are independent of each other, so you can attend one or both) 

SAVE THE DATES:

November 11: An Evening with Dr. Carl Elliot, author of The Occasional Human Sacrifice

December 8: An Evening with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, author of Pull: How Gravity Shapes Your Body, Steadies the Mind, and Guides Our Health

Monday June 16: An Evening with Dr. Claire Sandoe

Migraine is a brain disease, and the headache component gets a lot of our attention, but the prodromal and postdromal phases, as well as the aura, can cause diagnostic confusion and create management challenges.

Migraine may, outside of headache, present with emotional and cognitive symptoms, fatigue, autonomic instability, gastrointestinal symptoms, sensitivities to sensory input, vertigo, or even chills! It can be a great mimic that can cloud your differential diagnosis until you add it to the list of possibilities, and once you do, you may realize that you are seeing more patients living with migraine in your practice than you realized.

You are invited to spend an evening exploring everything about migraine but the headache.

Our guide for the evening will be Dr. Claire Sandoe. Dr. Sandoe is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Neurology) at the University of Toronto and a headache neurologist at the Women’s College Hospital Centre for Headache. She serves on the board of the Canadian Headache Society, the Education Committees of the International Headache Society and the American Headache Society, and is co-chair of the Canadian Headache Society National Neurology Resident Headache Course as well as the American Headache Society’s Mastering Migraine Therapies program. 

Tuesday May 27: An Evening with Dr. Paul Newhouse

 Are you under-prescribing nicotine? Before you respond with “WTF?” (What’s This Foolishness?), please take a moment to consider this: the potential therapeutic use of nicotine has been an ongoing question for medical research since 1926. Investigations as to nicotine’s use to treat neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Mild Cognitive Impairment as well as neuropsychiatric conditions like ADHD, schizophrenia, autism, depressions, Down’s Syndrome, and chemobrain has been going on for years without receiving much attention in the medical community.

You are invited to spend an evening with one of the world’s leading experts on the clinical use of nicotine in order to educate yourself about a potential new tool for your therapeutic toolkit.

Our guide for the evening will be Dr. Paul A. Newhouse,  Director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is also Jim Turner Professor of Cognitive Disorders at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Medicine.

World No Tobacco Day is May 31, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the dangers of smoking. Please join us a few days before that to consider the benefits of nicotine and the risks of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.