One thing that bothers me about telling people that I’m a med student is that I’m automatically stereotyped. It seems that before I can even make a first impression, the person I’m talking to already has a generalized concept of who I am. And that can be really frustrating, especially in the context of our [...]

So we had a session the other day on interdisciplinary teamwork—where some couple hundred students in their first year of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and a few more I can’t remember, crammed into the Rebecca Cohen Auditorium for a 2 hour session on inter-disciplinary teamwork.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, [...]

If there’s anything I take pride in, it’s my three great kids. So I’d look for any excuse to write about them. Well, here’s a great excuse! I’ve noticed having children in medical school is fairly rare and having three is even less the norm. There’s no doubt that being a [...]

The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is home to the hospitals tiniest patients, many weighing less than a kilogram (2.2 pounds). This is where I spend my Wednesday afternoons, learning about the care of neonates and wondering if they even appreciate the new dress shirts my girlfriend picked out for me. After several [...]

Once upon a time there was a boy studying anatomy in the early weeks of his medical education. He came across names like Manubrium and Crista Terminalis, and thought to himself, “If I ever wrote a Sci-Fi epic I’d be ripping off anatomy names like they were poor black people and I was Elvis…”
Then a [...]

Most people take this cliché figuratively, but have you ever taken it literally? For example, how many people do you know that have left home and gone somewhere to ‘find themselves’? What is it about travelling (ie. Getting on an airplane) that makes you think about your life? Does the physical act of motion [...]

This past December the Dalhousie Medical Debate Society sent the team of Alyson Horne-Douma and Tim Holland (me) to the World University Debate Championships. Although the top schools in central and western Canada make a priority of securing positions and sending teams at this top-end academic competition, it had been 5 years since an Eastern [...]

Yesterday a group of 10 of us set off for Prince Edward Island— 4 hour drive up to the smallest province in Canada just north of New Brunswick. As guests of the Prince Edward Island Medical Society and Government of Prince Edward Island, we were on a ‘meet and greet’ tour of some medical/health facilities [...]